The Long Road Home
by Mals86
Summary: It's a very long way from broken to healed. Through adversity, Tommy gets there. Multiple chapters. Rated M for language, descriptions of war, and violence, plus eventual romance and some lemony goodness later on. At least a couple of significant OOC characters. Hey, and I love reviews!
1. Chapter 1: Fifteen months

Fifteen months. And he'd lost the Corps.

But in some ways, he'd been lucky.

For one thing, the court-martial was quick; they hadn't made him wait months in a cell for a hearing. It was two days after Sparta, right after the shoulder surgery, when his assigned JAG, his judge advocate general attorney, showed up at the hospital to plan his defense, and the guy was both competent and sympathetic. He'd told Lt. Wayland everything – _everything_, from Pop's service in Nam to Tommy's childhood concussion, from Mom's broken bones to her death from lung cancer, from high school wrestling champ to nobody-from-nowhere without a soul in the world to turn to for help. From his enlistment and his friendship with Manny Fernandez to the hell of serving in a place where doing your job meant people died, where the reality of his daily life meant blood and pain and noise and fear and other people's terror, where nothing he did helped, where no matter how many pleas he spent on getting PFC Caleb Ward, whose nightmares kept the whole squad awake, sent home, they were futile, to that dreadful day when bombs rained and everywhere he looked there was betrayal and another dead brother. From Colt Boyd's gym to Pop's AA to Brendan's family. And when he'd gotten to telling about fighting Brendan in the cage, the torn shoulder muscle, the takedown, Brendan holding him there in so much pain and not letting go, not letting him go this time, Brendan yelling love into his ear – _then_, he could stop telling. Finally.

Wayland was black, from Chicago, one of the guys who'd gotten out of single-parent drug hell by enlisting and working through college and then law school. He'd told Tommy all this while he was setting up to tape the deposition and take notes, and either Tommy was all soft after the fight, or he was too tired to resist the help, because he didn't clam up when Wayland said, "So. Tell me what happened. I got all day, so take your time." Wayland had sat silent for a good five minutes when Tommy ran out of steam, and then he'd said, "I feel you, man." Tommy just sat. His shoulder was hurting like hell, but he was determined to get off the oxycodone as soon as possible, so he would push his next dose off at least half an hour. The stuff made him fuzzy-headed anyway. "Got a couple questions for you," Wayland finally said. "How'd you get out of Iraq and back to the States, anyway? And what did you do when you got here?"

_Oh. That. _So he explained the unlikely string of circumstances, letting Wayland gape and insist that such a thing wasn't possible, except that it _was_, because here he sat, didn't he? "I didn't even plan it, man," he'd told Wayland. "I just wanted out. I didn't think. So I headed out, and I kept expecting somebody would stop me, but they didn't."

"And you ran across those guys then, when you ripped the door off the tank?"

"Yeah. Couldn't just let 'em drown. Anyway, it must've been about eight separate times that I should have gotten busted, but I didn't, and I wound up back in Texas, and I hustled a couple of games of pool to get some cash to live on. Ran out of money in Topeka, and got into a bar fight with a guy, and this small-time fight manager recruited me to fight a couple of official bouts. So I did that some, but he was cheating me out of my pay because I didn't have ID, so then I bought a bus ticket to Pittsburgh. Because what else could I do?"

Wayland looked at him a minute, head on one side. Then he'd said, "I heard this thing once. 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.' Robert Frost. Poet of America. That make sense, dude?"

It did.

Harder to explain was the delay between the time he got back and the time he'd been caught. He could have turned himself in at any point as a soldier shaken by friendly fire and rattled by PTSD, gotten some counseling, been disciplined, and sent back to finish his tour, and he'd probably still have been forgiven. But now? Wayland was sorry, but this was serious. He'd do his best, and he'd have to get the military psychiatrist on board with it _(great, a psychiatrist?),_ but the Corps was likely to take an extremely dim view of desertion in time of war. He'd see what he could do. What did Tommy want? Did he want Wayland to ask for the DD?

_God, not that_. Tommy had shaken his head, firmly. He'd said, "Maybe I ran out on the Corps, but as far as I'm concerned, the Corps cheated on me first. I wanna patch it up. If I can." Wayland nodded, fist-bumped Tommy, and then he went off to talk to people, turning wheels and making deals.

The TV news people came, Wayland fended them off. Fan mail came. He didn't read it. He avoided the newspapers, avoided the TV news, but people tended to stare. He sat in bed some, and in the rec room some, wearing a robe and sweats and a sling, and playing cards one-handed.

Brendan came to see him every day, and Pop came and sat in the waiting room, waiting until Tommy was ready to see him, and after four days he was, and Pop came in and sat by the bed on Tommy's bad side, the side away from the door, like he was going to sit there until Kingdom Come, but he didn't say anything for the better part of an hour. He just sat there, and he put his big old paw over Tommy's hand, and they just... sat, and it was okay. Finally Pop cleared his throat, in that gravelly way he had, and he said, "You know I got four days under my belt now, Tommy." He'd just nodded. He'd known from the clean smell of his father's skin, the clearness of his eyes. The beginnings of peace were there, in his gaze and his big powerful body. And when Pop had got up to go, he'd kissed Tommy on the top of his head and muttered something that might have been "love you."

On the fifth day he'd been issued boots and uniforms, a couple of sets of MCCUUs and one of dress blues, with his name tape and his pins and medals, and they'd given him a haircut. He was discharged into MP custody and moved somewhere else, a lockup area where he was in a room instead of a cell, probably because of the injury. He saw the psychiatrist, he talked. He saw Wayland, he listened. On the tenth day, he was down to the smallest dose of oxycodone that could manage his pain and leave him clear-headed, and he put on the dress blues, and the MP's escorted him to his court-martial.

That's still a blur to him. On Wayland's advice he'd opted for judicial hearing, and the guy on the bench looked a whole lot like the toughest SOB Tommy'd ever known, his drill sergeant, and somehow this made it easier for him to relax his shoulders and raise his head and look the judge in the eye: sorry, but ready to make it right. Because he was.

Wayland had lined up everybody he could think of to testify. Two of Tommy's old CO's offered character testimony via videocam, and a couple of the guys he'd saved with the tank. Three Congressmen and a Senator offered written support. The Corps psychiatrist, a Major Abramson, offered some explanations and analysis and recommendations. But none of this was going to matter much, Tommy saw, when his battalion CO walked in ready to testify, with fury in his eye. The battle details were gone over, and it had become clear that the friendly-fire disaster had tarnished quite a few careers, but that wasn't going to matter either.

"We recovered 38 sets of dog tags from the area," Lt. Col. William Hamblin stated, eyes not on his questioner but on Tommy, "so the thinking was that we'd lost that entire platoon. It was only later, through the remains-identification process, that we realized we were short a body." _"Body,"_ Tommy reflected silently, _is a pretty optimistic way of describing the things that were left after a bombing like that. _ Still, everyone got the point. "We were able to identify 36 soldiers, and there was only enough material to identify one other. We knew it was either PFC Isaac Farmer or Staff Sgt. Conlon, because we didn't have next-of-kin DNA to match against for either one of them. I kept telling the guys it had to be Conlon, because there was no way he'd have taken off. Not Conlon. No way." Hamblin's voice was steady, but the blame and disappointment in it were plain, and Tommy had to grit his teeth to keep his body from bending in half from pain and guilt and shame. "Staff Sgt. Conlon displayed leadership and bravery under fire. He was constantly concerned for the well-being of the soldiers in his command. He was an exemplary soldier, _exemplary_... until he wasn't. And I cannot express how much that wounds me."

Wayland tried to show Tommy's actions as the result of extreme emotional turmoil as the result of battle shock, combined with his childhood background and the feelings of betrayal due to being fired upon by his own side. However, Lt. Col. Hamblin's testimony had left the bare fact of Tommy's desertion sitting there under the unforgiving glare of military judgment: he'd left his unit. Yes, true, somebody in Marine Corps Aviation had royally screwed up and fired on their own soldiers. Yes, true, every other guy in his whole platoon was dead, thirty-seven Corps brothers lying on the sand in a welter of blood and body parts, and he'd been shocked and concussed, but he'd _left his unit_. The company's other platoon hadn't been far away, and Tommy could have headed that way – but he hadn't. He could have turned himself in at any point – but he hadn't. He'd committed the cardinal sin of leaving men behind, and never mind that, somehow, he'd left himself behind too.

He could see the dishonorable discharge coming, and he could feel the weight of it pressing down on him, making it hard to breathe and hard to keep paying attention. Only the sound of the judge's voice, asking him to rise for the reading of the verdict, snapped his head up.

The verdict: Staff Sgt. Thomas R. Conlon would be stripped of his rank. Course of treatment to be undergone with a military psychiatrist. Confinement of fifteen months to be served at a military prison facility such as the one at Ft. Leavenworth. Forfeiture of pay and benefits for the time period starting from the date of the desertion. Dishonorable discharge, effective immediately upon completion of confinement.

The top of his head went cold.

DD. That meant no veterans' benefits: no pension, no medical care, no GI Bill. He'd just lost his right to own a firearm, not that he ever wanted to touch a gun again. It would be difficult to find a job. Worst, he'd lost the Corps – not just his active service, but he'd be shunned and shamed by anybody who knew of the sentence.

He'd lost the Corps, forever. It had been family for so long.

_**Author's note:** I love this movie. The surprise was on me, because I saw the ads and said to myself, "Ohhhh, yeah, another one of those movies for guys who like to watch Roadhouse and play with themselves. Nah, don't wanna see that." BUT. Tom Hardy has become my new actor crush – I think he's truly astounding, very talented, an incredibly skilled and subtle actor. (Doesn't hurt that he's easy on the eyes, too.) I'd seen him as Bane in the Batman flick and then in a rerun of a 2009 PBS production of Wuthering Heights, tearing up the joint as the larger-than-life revenge machine, Heathcliff, and then I remembered that I'd also seen him as the unreliable, pretty-boy agent Ricki Tarr in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (and had promptly forgotten him, having been dazzled by Gary Oldman). I saw the trailers for Lawless, which interested me because I grew up in the Virginia county that sits just north of Franklin County, and the Bondurant boys are still legendary around those parts. Hardy's turn as the laconic but violent Forrest Bondurant made me laugh and then catch my breath, and THEN I caught "Warrior" on Netflix._

_It blew me away. I'd have said that a film about men punching the crap out of each other in a cage would have **nothing **to say about family, or love, or loyalty, and I'd have been dead wrong. If you're reading this, you know._

_I will say that there are plot holes in the thing that you could drive a combat vehicle through. This bothers me, because the entire story is sort of built on some scaffolding over the holes. For example, #1: Tommy managed to get back to the US from Iraq, from a military installation? Unlikely to the point of utter ridiculousness – those guys have to have written orders to fly on military flights, and they don't carry passports on patrol, and there's no way to take a civilian flight without a passport. In fact, as of 2013 there is only one report of a desertion in Iraq. It's just too difficult to escape from in that situation. So, how'd Tommy make it back to the US of A? It's a complete mystery, and my mind says impossible. In which case we'd have no story at all, so I'm going to call it a miracle and let it go._

_#2: when he disappeared from a battle area, nobody contacted his next of kin? Either he was dead, in which case the Marines would have gone looking for next of kin, because you have to list that on your forms, and whose name would he have used? OR they knew he was a deserter, and the Marines don't let you just slide by on your merry way. They'd have gone looking. They go backwards from previous addresses, if necessary, and since dear old Dad hasn't moved, the military would have been certain to have checked with Paddy about the death/disappearance of his younger son. We know he enlisted under his real name._

_#3, the Sparta organizers didn't ask for Tommy's birth certificate/driver's license? Of COURSE they would have. You have to have positive identification for the IRS, if for no other reason. And then they'd have had his real name, his Social Security Number, and everything else they'd need to find out who he really was. Puh-leese._

_You will notice that I say nothing about the MMA/UFC inaccuracies I'm certain are there. That is because a) I don't know a blamed thing about it, and b) I don't really care. The emotional story, however, t**hat **absolutely rocks. And since that is mostly what people seem to be coming here for, I'll oblige you. And I do tend to write author's notes with installments, but I won't get quite so chatty in the future – sorry about this one being a book on its own!_

_Regarding the court-martial sentence: I did some research. The script has Tommy admitting to deserting his unit. Desertion in time of war is a pret-ty dang serious offense, and the **maximum** prescribed sentence is "death or life in prison, as a court-martial may direct." Desertion with intent to avoid hazardous duty has a prescribed maximum sentence of "dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, reduction to the lowest enlisted grade, and confinement for 5 years." And while it's possible that a military judge might be swayed by heroism, or a diagnosis of trauma/PTSD, it is NOT likely. It is, in fact, an open secret that Marines don't officially believe that PTSD exists - that there are only soldiers who keep to the code, and soldiers who do not, and it is extremely difficult to receive a medical discharge attributable to PTSD. Since 2001, no US soldier has served more than two years confinement for the military crime of desertion._


	2. Chapter 2: In

_I should make it clear that in each story I make no claim to own any intellectual material associated with the film or script. _

Part 2: **In**.

Fort Leavenworth. He's been expecting it to be bad, and it is, but it could have been a _lot_ worse. He's in the minimum security section, so he's in a room with seven other guys instead of a solitary cell. He can eat in the dining area. He's not eligible for college education via the GI Bill, but there are classes available at the prison, and he takes some of them: refresher math courses, some history, some computer stuff. He sees the staff psychiatrist for half an hour once every two weeks. The two hours inmates get for PT isn't really enough, not for him, and he wants to stay busy at all costs, so when he's not running or lifting during exercise time, he's doing sit-ups and push-ups, plus every other drill he can think of that uses his own body weight to strengthen his muscles.

The lights are dim at night, but always on, so he doesn't sleep well. Which is okay, because too often, when he does sleep, his dreams are gruesome and full of guilt. Bombs falling. Manny in three pieces, the light gone from his eyes. A whole village full of Iraqis shouting. L Cpl Tony Faw's unmistakable Cherokee-alphabet tattoo on the arm of a body with no head and no legs. The Iraqi girl bleeding to death in the little bare house full of other dead people, her dress pulled up to her thighs, the silky feeling of her eyelids under his thumb as he closed them. Mom coughing on her knees. The tattered photo of S Sgt Bob Fleischman's beautiful redheaded wife holding their baby, floating on the dusty wind over unmoving bodies. The bar fight in Topeka, trying to hold off two drunk rednecks at once, six fists flying. Detached limbs covered in dust so thick you couldn't tell whether they had belonged to soldiers or natives. Sometimes he dreams about firing his M-4 carbine until he's out of bullets, but there's an endless row of loaded guns in front of him and an endless parade of faceless people he has to shoot, so it never stops, and the guns get hot and his hands get burned and he can barely see through the smoke, and the constant kick of the gun into his shoulder starts feeling like torture, and all the time people are dying dying dying.

Even though he doesn't believe in God anymore, he still prays for dreamless nights.

The inmates sort themselves into self-identified groups: the sex offenders (about 50% of the guys in Leavenworth are sex offenders of some kind or other, from child molesters to possessors of kiddie porn to rapists) here, the druggies here, the guys who have multiple repeat drunk-and-disorderlies there. The deserters there. The other guys call them The Cowards, and while that stings, he ignores it as much as possible. Those other guys, they don't know. They don't know what he's been through, and he could never tell them.

A good portion of the day is spent in pointless repetitive tasks, like in Basic, and you have to ask permission for absolutely everything. But he'd gotten through Basic just fine, back when he was 18. As a veteran of Paddy Conlon's Army, what with the constant drill and the mindless obedience, he's always been good with this kind of stuff. Keep your head down, do what they say immediately and with all your strength, and keep doing it until they tell you to stop – it's exactly like training with Pop, exactly like Basic, and it's not in the least fun, but it's predictable and it's easy.

What's hard is thinking about what he's missing. What he can't have. What he never had. What he might never have in his life.

He makes one friend, from among the guys in his 8-man bunk cell. David Porter, another Marine, is so messed up from seeing sixteen buddies of his blown to pieces by an IED in Afghanistan that he never quite stops twitching. Serious PTSD. You drop so much as a frickin' _spoon_ near the dude, he freaks out a mile. He's here because, after hearing that he was being redeployed, he went off to Mexico and just stayed there, in a small town, doing some weed to keep the demons at bay. They'd found him, of course. In his good moments, Davey is a likable guy, full of funny stories. He doesn't have many good moments. Most of the time he's a jittery wreck, and he never sleeps quiet. But he knows what it's like to see your Corps brothers lying dead and dying and broken. And sometimes, when the ache is really bad, he'll come and sit on the floor next to Tommy, let his arm bump up against Tommy's, just like Manny used to do.

It's comforting. Because nobody touches you in prison, or if they _do _touch you, you don't want them to. Sometimes Tommy, waking out of terrifying dreams, will let himself remember how it felt to have his big brother's arms around him, or the touch of his mother's last kiss on his forehead. Sometimes, if he's hurting bad enough, he'll lie there and remember the feeling of his dad's arm around his shoulder, the day Tommy won the state wrestling championship. More than that he doesn't dare, because it might lead to tears.

There isn't much inmate-on-inmate violence here – for one thing, everyone is at least familiar with military discipline, and for another, the guards here won't tolerate it. Even if that weren't the case, Tommy's still got enough muscle, and enough _mean _in his eye, to ensure that he's left alone. He takes some heckling from time to time, from guys who knew who he was and what he'd done from the TV news, but everybody is there in prison for a reason, and even the guys who are furious that he betrayed the Corps aren't stupid enough to go after him physically.

He misses the guys in his platoon like a toothache. That hole, where something used to be? How your tongue keeps going there, like it can't figure out how the tooth can just be _gone?_ He misses them like that. Manny, Bob, Chris, Tony, all of them. How can they still be gone, when he's still here? How much he'd give to be able to just go back in time. All he can do is to think of one fallen brother every single day, and to devote that day's efforts to the memory of that man. Four hundred and fifty-seven days divided by thirty-seven, that means he manages to make it through the platoon twelve times, with a few days left over that he devotes to his mother.

Pop writes every day. He doesn't say much, just includes little snippets of local news and maybe sometimes a picture cut out of the newspaper, but he signs every letter, "Love, Pop." It's ridiculous how much that means to Tommy. It's not that he's not still plenty pissed off about all the hell that went on in the old days, but sometimes he thinks about the good times, too, and while it doesn't exactly even out, he feels more hopeful.

Brendan writes, too. Twice a week at least, sometimes more often, big envelopes with pictures drawn by the girls, anecdotes from his classroom, anything. Photos Tess took, of sunsets or pretty leaves or the girls themselves. Brendan's started coaching the high school wrestling team. He misses Tommy. He sends love.

Pilar writes once a month. She's grateful for the financial help from Tommy's brother, she's grateful Tommy wanted to help, she and the kids are good... What she doesn't say, but what shows in her letters, is how hurt she is that Tommy hadn't told her everything. How hurt she is that he left Manny behind.

Sundays are the loneliest days. It's then that Tommy writes all his letters for the week. He never has news of his own, but to keep in practice with communications that don't involve grunting, he writes his brother and his father: "The food sucks, but not worse than MREs." "That was funny, you letting a kid have a baseball bat in class." "I don't know what I'll want to do when I get out. Not sure I'm coming back to Pittsburgh to stay." "Tell Tess I said she needs to take you to the Bahamas for a vacation." He replies to Pilar's letters, but it's awkward and he can't think of a thing to say to her except to ask how she and the kids are.

A day goes by. A day goes by. Another day. Another. Again a day. Between boredom and misery, the entire fifteen months go by day by day. Davey leaves, finally transferred to a psych ward somewhere to ride out his screaming nightmares. Other guys leave, more guys come in, and finally Tommy's the Old Man of the 8-bunk cell with his pick of the beds, and two months after that, he's told he'll be leaving in the morning, and to pack up all his stuff. Since "his stuff" includes a prison-issued duffel bag, his clean underwear, and the bits of mail that he's managed to keep, he's packed in an instant.

He's served with his discharge papers, allowed to change from the plain khaki prison uniform into prison-issued civvies, a chambray work shirt and jeans. He does not pass go, but does collect the $200 Pop had sent for this occasion last week, and he walks straight to the Greyhound station for the 'Burgh and home.

_Author's Note: There is no Greyhound station in Leavenworth, but there's one in Kansas City, MO, about 30 miles away. The bus trip from KC to Pittsburgh takes about sixteen hours. _

_Bob Fleischman is a real person, and so is his beautiful redheaded wife, but he is not and never was a Marine. Tony Faw is a real person too; he was the first boy I ever French-kissed and I haven't seen him for almost thirty years, but I don't think he was a Marine either, and I couldn't say whether he had any tattoos. David Porter is a real person as well. Twenty-five years ago he was a skinny Navy ROTC college guy with a great bass voice. I never kissed him, but I should have. Again, not a Marine. These people share only their names with characters in this fanfic._


	3. Chapter 3: Out

_As always, I make no claim to own any intellectual material associated with the film._

**Part 3: Out.**

Why do some choices free you and some doom you? He's been thinking about it off and on for months, and on the bus he rests his head against the window and goes deep, letting his eyes rest on the landscape. Lots of cornfields in Kansas and Missouri, then little towns in Ohio, and finally the ugly cragginess of western Pennsylvania. All the time, he's thinking about betrayal and forgiveness and exile and amends, the way some doors close behind you and immediately lock, so that you can never go back again no matter how desperately you want to. He understands Brendan's choice a little better now – his big brother had thought that they had all the time in the world, that leaving didn't mean forever, that Tommy was strong enough on his own, and Brendan had been dead wrong about all of that. But he hadn't been wrong about the girl. That had been real.

Tess has been "that girl" to Tommy for so long that he sometimes forgets that she has a name. He'd even forgotten her face, only remembering that she was blonde and pretty. But he's seen her with grown-up eyes now, and he's seen that the bond between her and his brother is clear and strong and healthy. He's seen the way that they look at each other.

_Someday, a woman will look at me like that, _he vows to himself, _and she will be the sun in my sky. I will rather die than hurt her. I will break the pattern too._

Is the biggest difference between Brendan's betrayal of him and his betrayal of the Corps that one was done for love, and the other out of pain? The situations are completely different, he knows that. You don't take a vow of service to your family – but then, you shouldn't have to, it's understood. He'd been an adult; Brendan had been a teenager. Tommy doesn't really know. It's enough, maybe, that he understands now that Brendan's choice had somehow become his own choice. That they're brothers in more than blood now.

He thinks about how it had felt leaving Pittsburgh all those years ago, pulling away from the curb in Mom's bottomed-out station wagon, grocery boxes full of their things in the back. Looking backwards out of the window as Brendan, standing on the sidewalk, got smaller and smaller until finally they turned the corner and he was gone. It had felt, then, that _Brendan_ was leaving _them_. Tommy had been, by turns, defiant, excited, and terrified, and he kept wanting to tell Mom to turn around and then deciding not to ask. The whole side of her face was like something out of a nightmare, and she drove as if it hurt her to be sitting up, and Tommy's own ribs were sore anyway, so going back was out of the question. Except that if Brendan was staying, maybe it shouldn't be. He'd racked his brains trying to figure out what to do, and then he'd fallen asleep, and when he woke up they were already in Missouri and he'd felt so sure that Brendan had ditched him for_ that girl_ that he could barely stand it. Leaving or left behind. Did it really matter which one he was?

He sleeps. The bus stops in another town; he's too groggy to care much where it is. It isn't Pennsylvania yet. He eats a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup at the diner next to the station, finishing just in time to get back onto the bus. He feels conspicuous wearing his jarhead haircut and no uniform, but there's precious little he can do about it now. He doesn't even own a baseball cap.

On the bus once more, he thinks about Pop, too, about sitting in a diner with Pop. About how his voice in Tommy's head, remembered, still wakes Tommy up some mornings. About Pop's big hard hands. He thinks about how Pop's hands could be so capable, carrying more gear than anyone else could manage, and how enormous they'd been, holding five-year-old Tommy's hand in one and seven-year-old Brendan's hand in the other, on that rare weekend trip to the shore. And Tommy remembers, too well, how Pop's hands could feel if he'd had "about enough of your lip," like the very shovel-edge of hell coming at you. Like mauls, or battering rams.

He would never tell anyone this, but when he'd gone all out after Mad Dog Grimes in that semifinal round, it was Pop's angry hands he'd been channeling, for the maximum punishment effect. Let Mad Dog threaten _him_? Call _him _a fluke? Ha. He'd fucking _end _the guy.

He'd ended Mad Dog. He'd enjoyed doing it. There was undoubtedly more of Pop in him than he'd wanted there to be.

Those times he'd trained with Pop for wrestling, though, those had been good times. Distract Pop with, say, a discussion of how to take down a taller guy and keep him down, and he didn't get quite so antsy or so heavy-handed, didn't drink quite so much. Get him involved in planning strategy and monitoring Tommy's runs, and he didn't have time to go by the bar for three or four quick ones after work. Good for everybody, Brendan and Mom included. And if Brendan had decided he didn't want to work it Pop's way, would rather just practice lazy with the wrestling team, well, that had been Brendan's lookout. "Power. Then patience," Pop would say over and over, coaching Tommy. "Practice until it's automatic. Do it a thousand times and your muscles will remember." Brendan had particularly hated that point; he got bored with repetition, and Pop would wind up yelling at him for making it too fancy, for not _listening_. Then he'd turn back to his younger son, the one eager for his advice. "Find the point of balance. Then take it away. Just like we know, Tom."

There was Good Pop and there was Mean Drunk Pop. It was the monster side of Pop they'd been running away from, the kind of person who could stay out all night and come home still drunk in the morning, smelling like vomit and some other woman's slutty perfume. The kind of person who could call his wife a bitch whore, throw a plate of hot stew at her, hit her over and over until she couldn't move, shove his son and kick him in the ribs for getting in the way. But when they'd left that Pop behind, they'd left Good Pop behind too, the one who'd muss Tommy's hair and say, "Proud of you, kid." Tommy still didn't know how he'd ever thought he didn't need Good Pop.

When Mom had gotten so sick that he'd finally realized that it wasn't just a bad cold, or bronchitis, or even pneumonia, he'd debated with himself six times a day whether he should call Brendan for help. Brendan could send some money, maybe. Tommy was making enough after school at the Super Saver to cover the rent, barely, but there wasn't much left over after that. If it hadn't been for the food bank at Holy Rosary, they'd have starved, because Mom was too afraid of being found to apply for food stamps.

Maybe if he called, Bren could send Aunt Lucy. Maybe hop a bus himself and come stay for awhile, not tell Pop where he was. Because Mom kept moaning, "Don't tell your father. Don't. Don't tell him where I am. Don't let him come get me." So he hadn't called home, and hadn't called home, and then there was no longer a need to. He'd finished the last four months of high school on his own, living in a room at the old YMCA downtown and taking the bus to school every day, bagging groceries and doing inventory for whatever he could earn, until he'd graduated and could go straight into the Marines.

And now: dishonorably discharged. Now with the "First Civilian Division," the term for Marines who return to a nonmilitary life, and lucky to be that. He feels exiled. Which is, he supposes, nothing more than he deserves.

He's dozed on and off all day on the bus, so when it gets dark he's ready for the night and how difficult it is. To keep the dreams away – wouldn't that be just fucking _great_, if he had another one of his gruesome dreams and screamed the other passengers awake? - he distracts himself by thinking about other things.

The smell of Mom's hair, clean and pinned up under the hairnet, as she kisses him awake in the morning, right before she leaves for the diner. When she comes home after work she'll smell of hamburger and onions and burnt coffee and sweat, but for now she's clean. On Sunday mornings she smells of Arpege and hairspray.

At his first post, there's this skinny Hispanic kid who keeps catching Tommy's eye and making him almost laugh during inspections. Pretty soon they're eating lunch together and finding ways to run next to each other during PT, and sharing Bud Lights in the evenings. Manny's got a girl back home in Texas and he misses her like crazy. Tommy's got a girlfriend himself, an enlisted girl with brown eyes and a wicked sense of humor. He likes Melanie a lot; she's absolutely fearless and adept at clandestine handjobs in the PX movie theater, under cover of somebody's jacket. But when she meets an older guy in a different unit, a Captain America type who's already made Sergeant, she dumps Tommy without any hint of regret. Months later he'll meet a cute blonde named Christine who's the daughter of an officer on base. She's just a year younger than him, and they like the same kind of music and movies and beer, and she is _gorgeous_. They have sex anywhere they can manage it, which isn't easy, and it feels so good that he thinks they're in love and she's just as devoted to him as he is to her. In the fall, though, she will head off to UCLA without looking back. Tommy will figure that he's better off without women, and he'll swear off serious girlfriends from that point on. Girls he meets in bars, weekend girls, one-night-stand girls – he'll take those. Short-term fun. Nobody who could break his heart. There were plenty of them, too. Hot girls, the tits-and-ass ones who toss back appletinis and dance all sexy, the ones who like his tattoos and his clever hands, but not the way he never calls them back, or the way he'll kick them out when they cry.

He likes Pilar, too. She is definitely not his idea of sexy, though she's so sweet Tommy swears she must be made out of sugar candy. But she's Manny's girl, and then Manny's wife, and then the mother of Manny's kids, and although there's a lot of affection between her and Tommy, she still belongs to_ Manny_, and Tommy's still on the outside.

He should write Pilar. What will he say? There's nothing to say, except "I'm out." And maybe, "I don't know what I'm going to do." He can't tell her he misses Manny like he'd miss his own arm, because that's too painful. He'll just send a postcard to tell her where he is, that will be enough. That will be all he can do.

And now it's nearly 4 am, still dark, but not too dark to miss the way the mill chimneys stand up tall into the sky. Ugly, dirty, homely 'Burgh, the "ArmPitt of the nation," he and his school friends used to call it, and his heart feels too big to fit inside his ribs. It hurts. "Home," he whispers without meaning to.

The streets look familiar, and then more familiar, and then they're over the Monongahela and into downtown. Bus station. The lights come on. He gathers his stuff and gets off. It's 4:40 am, too early to call Pop, and now he's sleepy anyway. He can catch a nap in a seat in the station until it's late enough to hike over to the house. He stretches, gets off the bus. It's as he's walking out of the men's room, heading over to the mostly-empty rows of chairs, that he hears it.

It's Pop's voice. "Tommy?" He turns, and there's Pop a few yards away, eyes tired under the soft cap and face craggy with lost sleep, but so full of a sweetness he's never shown Tommy before. Pop holds his arms open. Tommy drops his duffel and goes straight into them, not caring whether he looks like a fool. Their arms are strong around each other, and Pop is crying a little but neither one of them minds because Tommy might be crying just a little bit too, who knows, and it doesn't solve anything but it feels so good.

"Come home, son."

O : O : O :

Being in was weird. Being out is weirder.

He can't sleep at night, has to sleep during the day with the sun coming in through the faded navy curtains. Everything tastes good, even Pop's crappy overcooked eggs, but he can't eat much. It sticks in his throat. That first week is pretty much eating and sleeping; at night he goes through old scrapbooks and old photos, old wrestling tournament programs. He thinks about his mother. There's his eighth-grade yearbook, with a picture of Carolyn Hillhouse, the first girl he ever kissed – under the bleachers at the football game, and she'd tasted like orange soda. Wonder where old Carolyn "Brickhouse" is now? And George Markley, who'd been his best friend in middle school. What's George doing now?

He doesn't ask. He thinks that the answers would depress him.

He doesn't go out, either. He can't bear the thought of running into some old school friend, or some friend of Pop's who'll ask questions.

Instead, at night, he runs, or flips through the old photographs again. Pop's kept all his clothes from when he was here last, and the sweatpants fit but the shirts are loose. He feels like an idiot wearing them, but he doesn't have anything else. His running shoes are getting really worn; he'll have to see about getting some new ones.

Brendan calls, but Tommy can't really talk on the phone. His throat closes up and he just hands the phone back to Pop. "You want him to come?" Pop asks, eyebrows raised. _Yes_, Tommy nods. "He wants you," Pop says into the phone. "Yeah, come on. Any time." He listens, and the sound of Brendan's voice indistinctly buzzing in the air makes Tommy dizzy and homesick. "Okay. See you Friday, son. Yeah. 'Bye." Pop hangs up, and reports to Tommy, "He has to coach conditioning, but he can be here late Friday and stay all weekend." _Yes_, Tommy nods again, and goes back upstairs. He's exhausted again.

By Friday, Pop's in as much of a fidget as he ever gets, and if Tommy had to guess, he'd say it was because of Brendan. Pop buys the good steaks, and some packaged salad, and makes the effort to go by the bakery for fresh rolls. "Saturday dinner," he says to Tommy, hefting the grocery bags. "I can cook this much, at least."

Brendan was supposed to be there by 9:30 or 10, given his work schedule, but at 7:12 his dark sedan's pulling up out front and Pop's yelling, "Tom! Hey Tommy! Your brother's here!" and Tommy thunders down the stairs to find Brendan in the parlor, his eyes lit up.

"Hey!" Brendan says, smiling. He holds out his hand for Tommy to shake, but Tommy just looks at him. He can't speak to save his life. Then Brendan smiles wider and opens his arms, and that does it. It's just like when Pop came to the bus station the other day – something about that embrace just tears down the walls. They're both crying like little girls, and they don't care. They keep holding each other harder, until it turns into a contest, and they start trying to push each other off balance. Brendan hooks a foot around Tommy's ankle, and then they're on the floor wrestling, and they're suddenly laughing as hard as they'd been crying, and right _there_, there's another little piece of home, a good piece, reclaimed.

They eat breakfast for dinner, because it's easy, and over scrambled eggs and toast Tommy talks some about Leavenworth and the ride home. Brendan talks about his family. He talks about how much fun it is to drop by the gym when he feels like it for a sparring match that gets out some frustrations but won't leave him half dead, and how he could certainly give up teaching, but he's not going to because it makes him happy. The half of his winnings that didn't go straight to the IRS has gone, for the most part, straight into investments. That is, his house is paid off and a nice annuity went to Pilar, and everything else is in the bank. His lifestyle hasn't changed much, except that he doesn't worry about paying bills now. Tess has (happily) given up waitress-bartending for college; she wants to run an early-learning center someday.

The high school's wrestling season was over two months ago, but Brendan has plans for some summer-fall conditioning, and he asks Pop's advice. So Pop talks – and Brendan's right, absolutely nobody can condition you like a hardass jarhead – and Brendan listens.

Tommy listens too, and bit by bit something becomes clear to him: he wants to fight. Maybe just the UFC rotation, but he's heard Sparta III is on for this fall, too, and he wants to be there.

What's gone into this sudden certainty? Well, _losing_, that's for damn sure. He hates to lose, to anybody, and he doesn't want to end his career on a low point.

And there's something about it that ties him to family, which is, unexpectedly, after all this time and all this bad history, an element he finally wants in his life. He wants Pop's experience backing him up, and he wants Brendan's advice; he wants the Conlon boys running the frickin' world. For once.

He's had absolutely beyond enough of fighting enemies he can't see: cancer, alcohol, IEDs, fear, abandonment. It is so satisfying to punch the living daylights out of an opponent not only visible but willing.

Besides, what the hell else is he going to do with his time?

And another thing, he's _really _good at this shit.

"Tommy?"

Startled out of his daydream, he looks up. Brendan and Pop are staring at him. He's immediately defensive. "What!?"

They just stare at him for a long moment more, and just when he's starting to get itchy behind the eyeballs, Brendan turns back to Pop and says, "He's cooking something up over there."

"Sure he is. It's all over you, Tommy. Whatcha thinking?" Tommy takes a deep breath, trying to think how to tell them what his plan is, since it is still unformed and his reasoning isn't exactly logical. And then he doesn't have to. "I think he wants to start fighting again." There's a pleased note in Pop's voice, and Tommy's jaw falls. Pop's pleased?

"Yeah, I think he does." And then Brendan starts to laugh. "C'mon, Tom, we knew. We expected you to show up off the bus announcing it, or at least I did."

"Why?" is all Tommy can think to ask.

"Because I beat you, dumbass. If you let that stand and you were serious about not coming back, I'd have to check your body for alien possession." And that gets a startled snort of laughter out of him. He might not have lived with either of these guys sharing his DNA for fifteen years, but they still know him. "You know you hate to lose, Tommy," Brendan says, shaking his head.

True. He hates to lose.


	4. Chapter 4: Where Tommy Lives

They're in the cramped little office in Frank Campana's gym, and Frank wants some advice. "Glad you could come in today, buddy," he tells Brendan.

"Yeah, I've been pretty busy over the past week with midterms, but I'm finally caught up with grading. Should be able to come in tomorrow afternoon and spar a little, if you got somebody who won't take my head off."

"Well," Frank starts, and hesitates.

Brendan's eyebrows go up. This isn't like Frank, who's always got a plan, who's always thinking and working the angles. Maybe there's something he's embarrassed to ask. "Do you need some money, Frank?"

"What? No, man, nothing like that. No, I got a phone call around lunchtime that I'm trying to decide what to do about, and I wanted to talk to you."

"So who called?"

Frank tilts his head back to look at the ceiling. "Your brother."

This is a new development. Brendan had last called Pop's house a couple of days ago, just checking in to say hi and see how things were going. Pop had reported that Tommy was out for his second run of the day, and that things were going just fine, just the way conditioning had always gone with Tommy. "You know him, he's got an endless capacity for routine. It's just the same as it ever was – he eats what he's s'posed to, gets his running and his weights in, he don't stay out drinkin' or nothin'. And he works like a dog. I still can't wear him out. Makes me tired to watch 'im. He don't sleep good neither, but he's always up at five."

"Glad to hear things are going okay. Tell him I said hey," Brendan had said, and gone back to grading physics exams. But now this. Had they had a fight? Had Pop, God forbid, fallen off the wagon?

"You look surprised," Frank says. "So you didn't know about this?" Brendan shakes his head, not really willing to discuss his suspicions. It was bad luck that his cell phone had decided to die just after he got to school, since he'd left the charger at home. He'd been thinking it didn't matter, because if Tess needed him she knew the school number. Maybe he'd missed a call from Tommy.

Frank goes on explaining. "Yeah, I gather that something happened down at Colt's Gym earlier today. You know Colt Boyd is still managing Mad Dog Grimes, who is a colossal asshole. And apparently Tommy's been staying away from the guy even though Mad Dog's always after him for a sparring match – well, you can understand why, because it was so embarrassing for Grimes to lose twice to this guy nobody had ever heard of. Anyway, this morning Grimes finally talked him into the ring just for, as he called it, a 'friendly training-buddy workout.'"

"Ah, that's bullshit. He's got it in for Tommy."

Frank nods. "Exactly. So immediately Mad Dog starts in heavy on him, and while your brother was trying to keep things 'friendly,' eventually he lost his temper and punched the guy out. Knocked him cold – again. So now Colt Boyd's all pissed off, and he's revoked Tommy's gym membership."

"Well, that sucks. There are other gyms in the 'Burgh, but nothing so close to Pop's house." Now Brendan sees. "So he's asking you if you want to train him?"

"Yep. Said he's been thinking that he can't get by anymore just on being able to punch harder than anybody expects, and he was impressed by you when he fought you – " _That's something_, Brendan thinks, _and of course Tommy wouldn't say it to me_. "And he would like to add some different elements to his training. Said he'd like to stick to the conditioning regimen your dad works up for him, which I don't have a problem with, but he wants to stretch his skills a little."

Brendan is not sure what to say. He's remembering old arguments, Pop yelling and his own stubbornness, and Tommy standing off to the side biting his lower lip and giving Brendan the silent "don't piss Pop off, Mom will pay for it" warning look. Tommy's fight style is very different from Brendan's, always has been. Also, where will Tommy live? He knows Tommy's broke.

"So. What do you think?" Frank asks Brendan. "I figure you know the guy as well as anybody does, and you also know me. Should I take him on?"

Brendan is quiet, thinking, for a moment. He crosses his arms, shrugs a little. Frank, who's judging by his body language, is starting to get the feeling Brendan wants to say no, but not out loud. Finally Brendan takes a deep breath and says, "Well, here's the thing. You should probably know a little bit more about how he's been training, at least – a little bit about his history, how he fights, what he's capable of. What he's like."

Frank, familiar only with very basic details of the Conlon family background, settles back in his chair. "Well, I went back over all the video of his fights from a couple of years ago. I noticed that he goes all in very fast, very aggressive, very strong. He punches to knock people out, and while he's methodical with it and exploits openings, usually before his opponent has had a chance to figure him out, he's got this... fury. He might be the kind of guy who really needs that high-octane fuel to be any good." He sits forward again. "You know, in fact, he never left his feet during Sparta, until he fought you. He did go down to his knees, but_ he _was initiating the takedowns, and he was always on the offensive. You were the _only _guy to take him down onto the mat. I don't think he's comfortable there. And to be honest, Brendan, you know a lot of my coaching methods involve the mat and wrestling moves. I just don't know if I'm going to be able to add anything to his repertoire – whether he's even capable of doing that sort of thing, or whether he's really just a gifted boxer."

Brendan laughs, and there is just a trace of bitterness in the sound. "No, no, no, Frank. You don't understand. Look, Pop started coaching Tommy and me when we were just kids."

Frank waits for the significance of that statement. It doesn't come. "Yeah? So?"

"He coached us for _wrestling_."

"Really." Frank sits back again. "Now I'm surprised. Not that you did well with it, of course, but that your brother wouldn't have retained any of – "

"No," Brendan interrupts him. "Listen. Tommy was a champion wrestler. Didn't you catch this part on the news, right after Sparta? Pop coached him to six consecutive Junior Olympics gold medals in wrestling. _Six. Consecutive._ And two high school state championships at 152 pounds. Back to back, as a freshman and as a sophomore. It was unheard of. I had to go down to 145 just to get out of his weight class. Just to have a shot at somethin', you know? But I didn't even make it to state my entire high school career." Brendan, uncrossing his arms to gesture, shakes his head. "I mean, he was unstoppable. Never lost a match."

"Not even one?" Frank's intrigued.

"Not one. He was the Golden Boy, all right."

There's a pause. "Sounds like you might have been lucky to take him down to the mat at Sparta," Frank observes.

"No, not lucky." Brendan flashes a smile that's half pain. "No. I was smart. I knew how to take him down because I'd wrestled him a thousand times when we were kids. I knew all his best moves. I still do. I still know which combinations he favors, and whether he's more likely to turn left or right coming out of a particular move. In fact, I don't know that anybody _except_ me in that entire tournament could have taken him down."

"Huh. So I'm lookin' at the world expert on How To Beat Tommy Conlon, huh?" Brendan nods, all solemn. Frank's really curious now. "You think you were lucky to get him in that deep shoulder hold, or was he susceptible to it when you were younger?"

"He wasn't susceptible to anything in particular when we were younger. I think now... I think he wanted Sparta to be a real battle. Him and me, to the death." There's a pause here, while Brendan looks at the ratty gym carpet between his feet and rubs his forehead. "I think he wanted to hurt me. I think he wanted to make me hurt him. I mean, he wasn't going to tap out of anything, not with all that rage. He was going to make his opponent either knock him senseless or rip his arm off. No amount of opposition was going to make him give in." Brendan doesn't say it, but he knows: only pain plus love could have made Tommy give in.

There are more depths of feeling here than Frank has heretofore realized. There's more painful history between the brothers than the part Brendan's mentioned before, about how Brendan had chosen not to join his brother and mother in their exodus from the troubled family home, how Tommy blamed him for abandoning the two of them.

Brendan goes on, haltingly. "See... when we were kids? Pop's training methods really just didn't work for me. He was all about instinct and repetition and muscle memory, all about conditioning, and he could not understand the concept of using a position of apparent weakness to upset an opponent. Nothing but absolute domination made any sense to him at all. And so..." his lips press together, "so he wouldn't bother wasting time with training me. In fact, I remember Tommy being really pissed off at me once or twice and telling me that if I would only buckle down and work harder, between the two of us we could keep Pop so busy that he wouldn't have time to drink. I mean, Tommy was really furious at me."

"Do you think he might have been right?" Frank asks. This is rare evidence of strategic capability from the brain of a guy Frank has dismissed as being unsubtle, running only on instinct and the force behind his fists.

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't _know_, because I couldn't understand the reasoning behind what Pop kept telling me to do, so I couldn't do it, and he didn't keep trying anything different to get through to me. It's something I always try to do with my students – if they don't get one explanation, it's time to rephrase it or reframe it or try a different point of view. He wouldn't do that for me. Even Tommy wouldn't, or couldn't, explain it. He just kept saying stuff like, 'Look, if you just do what Pop says, you'll get it.' But I needed to _understand _first." He sighs and crosses his arms again. "I even thought that once Tommy and Mom took off, Pop might find some way to connect with me. But he wouldn't even give his older son the fucking time of day. It was like he was mourning over Tommy and I didn't even exist."

"Sounds like you're still mad about it." Frank's watching Brendan very carefully now, fascinated, all his capabilities for analysis in overdrive.

Brendan's silent for a moment. "Guess I still am, a little bit." He sighs. Recrosses his arms. "It wasn't Tommy's fault. He tried to get me to play ball Pop's way. And I don't know, but he might have tried to get Pop to reconsider too." He leans up against the wall as a thought occurs to him. "I guess I resented him for being the chosen one exactly the same way he resented Tess. Jealous."

"Wow, man, this is some heavy stuff here." There's a silence, and then Frank says, "So you're telling me that my trying to train your brother is a lost cause before I even start?"

"Maybe not," Brendan says, shaking his head. "Maybe not. But why do you want to? I mean, look, I love the ugly mutt, but that doesn't mean he isn't a pain in the ass."

"Use your head! Why wouldn't I want to be knows as the guy who trained both the guys in the title match of the first Sparta? Both of the Conlon boys. Business would explode. I might even be able to expand."

"I thought you didn't care about money," Brendan says.

"I don't. Well, not much. But look – " Frank gestures, "look, my legacy matters to me. Fighting is part of life, is the way I see it, and I'd like to expand the thinking that flow and balance is as important as force and brutality. If I can coach the Mean Marine, and he surprises everybody again by not being what they think he is, that's a point in my favor, okay? Takes the sport into being more of an art form and less of a bloodbath."

"Yeah, okay, Mr. Miyagi." They both laugh a moment, and then Brendan decides to level about how he sees Tommy's capabilities. "But here's the other thing about coaching my brother. You know how my mind works, right? You get me thinking about what my body should be doing, and my body follows, right?"

"It's how I roll," Frank interjects. "Visualization and relaxation are proven methods. Like I said: art form, not bloodbath."

"Well, Tommy isn't like me. What you have to understand about Tommy, if you're going to train him, is that Tommy lives right _here_ – " Brendan points to his eyes, "and right _here_," he gestures down his body, "and especially right _here_." He thumps his hand over his heart. "Senses. Body. Emotions. It's not that he doesn't think. It's that what he sees and does and feels affects how he thinks, rather than the other way around. It's just a different – " he breaks off and then tries again. "He's just different. From me."

"Okay." Frank is thinking. It would still be quite the coup to train the guy he thinks is going to be the next Sparta winner, but Brendan is right. It all depends on how willing Tommy is to try to adjust to doing things differently. "Well, you've seen him recently – you think he's capable of learning some new tricks?"

"I think he wants to," Brendan admits. "I think he wants to adapt. I mean, I think he's still dealing with all kinds of emotional fallout from the past. When I saw him at Pop's last week, I could see he was all closed off. I didn't even try talking to him right at first. I just went straight for the big manly bear hug."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Cathartic. I cried, he cried. We wound up on the floor trying our best to pin each other down, just like old times. But after that? He was able to talk to me. He was the same way with the girls. Tess drove down with them the day after, and you know, by then I knew how to deal with the issue. He barely said two words to any of them until I fixed it." Frank raises his eyebrows, questioning. "Yeah, I said, 'Here, can ya take her a second?' and plopped Rosie right smack in his lap, and she giggled. Ninety seconds later he's got his cheek laid over on her curls, and he's smiling and asking Tess how the drive was. Telling Emily she's just as pretty as her mother. Two years ago he said he didn't want to know my girls."

"So you think he's maybe doing okay now?" It might matter. If he's an emotional time bomb, Frank doesn't want him around the gym.

"Well, he absolutely will not talk about the war. No matter how you ask, you get nothing. Pop says he has ungodly nightmares. And God only knows what prison was really like for him. He won't say much about that either, except that he kept his head down and worked his ass off and didn't think. Which, you know, he _is_ perfectly capable of." He sighs. "But yeah, at least he seems to be actually dealing with all that crap now instead of stomping it down and turning it into anger, like pain is some kind of... fossil layer that turns into petroleum under pressure."

"That's a very good analogy. Guess that's why you're the teacher, huh? So... Maybe we give it a month or so, and if it's not working out for either of us, we shake hands and wish each other luck. That sound like a plan to put forward to your brother?"

"That sounds like a plan," Brendan agrees, and Frank picks up the phone to call his newest fighter-in-training.

When he gets home, Brendan plugs in his cell phone and turns it on to find a text from Tommy, reading, "hey bro wanna talk 2 u about maybe training with yr buddy Campana. People say hes good. Got kicked out of Colts today for fite w maddog. Maybe u can help me find apt in philly too. CM?"

He heads into the kitchen for dinner when Tess calls, distracted. He's thinking about which apartment buildings are close to Frank's gym, and if they're expensive, and whether Pop would want to come stay with Tommy.

"Hey," Tess says, and kisses him. "Glad to see you," and because he's glad to see her too, he pulls her close and lays a serious kiss on her. God, she's still the sexiest woman he's ever known. She's a little starry-eyed when he pulls away, and her voice is husky when she says, "Let's try to get the kids in bed early tonight, okay?"

"Definitely." He goes to kiss his daughters. Rosie, who is a healthy chunk of just-turned-four, is already eating her broccoli spears, pretending they are baby trees, and Emily is patiently waiting for her mother to help her fill her plate up with broccoli and orange-thyme rice and bacon-wrapped chicken.

Everyone is eating when Tess clears her throat and says, "By the way... there's a message on the machine. Tommy called. He thinks he might ask Frank Campana to start training him."

Brendan's been having thoughts about the matter, but he wants to be careful. "I know. Frank mentioned it."

"Tommy says something about you maybe helping him find an apartment near the gym, but I was thinking..." She takes a deep breath and starts to say something else, but Emily interrupts her.

"Uncle Tommy? He's coming here?"

"We're not sure," Tess starts to tell her, but then Rosie bounces up in her booster seat.

"I love Uncle Tommy!"

Brendan laughs. Tess shoots him a look and tells him, "Don't read too much into that. She loves Elmo, too, and Sully from 'Monsters, Inc.', and she still says she wants to marry Jack Porter."

"Jack?" Rosie says, gleeful. "I love Jack. I miss Jack."

"See?" Tess mutters to Brendan, who is having a hard time not laughing harder. Jack Porter is a former neighbor kid whose mother is one of Tess's best-friends-forever, and despite being Emily's age, he's surprisingly willing to play with the littler kids, helping them onto the swingset and making sure they don't get hurt playing kickball. He's got round blue eyes deep as an endless autumn sky, and if she were Rosie's age, Tess might herself be completely smitten with gentle Jack.

When is Jack coming back, Mommy?"

"And Martin. And Kelly," Emily adds. "I wish they'd move back soon."

"Me too, baby," Tess says, fervently. The girls are off on a tangent now, making it difficult for Tess to say what she needs to say, so she's going to have to get the conversation back on track somehow. She glances over to see Brendan looking at her, eyebrows up, waiting. His everyday patience and steadiness is such a blessing to her that she finds herself at a loss when he does go off and do something unexpected – like, say, buying a birthday present they can't afford, or signing up for some high-stakes MMA contest.

She never reckons on this risk-taking streak, it always takes her by surprise. Other women's husbands gamble the rent money, or cheat, or drink too much. Her husband's vice is being overly generous, with his money and his time and himself. It could be so much worse that she's stopped complaining about it – his picking up the tab for school supplies for a kid who can't afford it, or his spending an extra hour after classes to help a student who's struggling. So now, she figures, he might even approve of what she's going to say, because he knows that it's actually going to cost her something.

"I was thinking," she says hesitantly to him, under cover of Rosie's continued chant, between bites, of _Jack Jack Jack I love Jack_, and Emily's admonishing, _Rosie, that's just gross_, _don't show me your food, _"We have that addition out back with the guest suite, and we have plenty of space now. Why don't you ask Tommy to stay with us? At least until after Sparta."

He smiles at her, and Tess thinks to herself how much she loves him. "Are you sure? I know he can be sort of sullen. Not exactly the ideal houseguest."

"Well, I know what you mean," she says. "But I think that I would like to be a part of showing him what a normal healthy family looks like. And, you know, I suspect that despite the hard outer shell, he's pretty squishy on the inside."

Brendan's smile gets sweeter. "Gooey chocolate center, you absolutely nailed it. Just for _God's sake_ don't tell Mad Dog Grimes." He leans over and kisses her on the cheek. "I'll call him after dinner."


	5. Chapter 5: Starting Over

_As always, I make no claim to own any intellectual material associated with the film._

**Starting Over**

Tommy's been at Brendan and Tess' house for about three weeks now, doing his best to fit in with the flow of the household – meals, bathtimes, laundry – and trying to sleep in the comfortable double bed Tess has placed in his room. Getting back to what most people would call a normal schedule, a day shift one, has been surprisingly difficult. The house feels weird, too, loud in the mornings with Brendan and the little ones going off to school and Tess off to her classes at teacher college, and then silent the very instant the door closes at 7:20.

At that point in the day, he's been up long enough to grab coffee and an energy bar, loosen up a little and finish his first run, a six-miler. He'll eat eggs and toast and oranges with everybody else, a second breakfast, and wave to them from the kitchen table as they bang out the door. The first day, Tess was in such a hurry that she hadn't had time to put breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, so he did that for her, it was a little enough job, and he swiped a dishcloth across the counters before he went to make up his bed, and now he does those things as a matter of course. If there's a basket of dirty laundry, he'll toss it in the washer before he picks up his duffel and heads for the gym.

Neatness isn't one of his issues, at least, and he leaves nearly every room in the house looking better than when he entered it. The girls' rooms make him nervous, though, with Barbies and books all over the floor, and roller skates on the floor of Emily's closet, so he zips past those open doors without looking in if at all possible. His own "space," as Tess calls it, is a small suite built as an addition to the house in the last year, a bed-and-bath smaller than your average hotel room, done in blues and greens with plain blocky oak furniture. It's his habit to keep it pristine, all his stuff stowed properly the way he's done it since he learned how in Basic, twelve years ago.

It's easy if you don't own much.

He still misses the ease of uniforms. What he has now in the way of clothing is what he'd call "gym-rat uniform": t-shirts and hoodies, tanks, shorts, trackies, a couple of henleys, a couple of pairs of jeans. Everything is black, gray, or dark blue, even underwear and socks, so he can toss it all in the washer together. Simple. He likes it that way.

After second breakfast, he's off to Frank's gym to train: jab-hook-punch sessions with the bag, footwork drills, workouts with weights and the medicine ball. The fridge in the gym office is always full of fruit and raw veggies and hard-boiled eggs, and there's an enormous can of protein shake mix you can make up there in the blender. In the afternoon there's some sparring, with classical music on the speakers, and Frank talks about water and Zen and flow and living underneath your senses the way tadpoles live under the surface of a creek. The whole deal, in Tommy's view, is like trying to breathe through your eyelids like that crazy pitcher in "Bull Durham." It's totally freakin' nuts, makes his brain hurt, feels like stretching just a little too far, but somehow it's a tiny bit easier every day. Frank always seems to know when he's hit maximum capacity, and he'll pull Tommy off the mat and send him to run and de-stress, maybe ice for awhile. Depending on how stressed he is, that run can be anywhere from five miles to nine and a half.

Then it's back to Brendan and Tess' house on Maple Heights for a shower and some dinner. The first week he'd been there, he'd bought his own groceries, but Tess put a stop to that by insisting it was easier for her if he just handed over his list and his grocery budget, and she'd buy the things he needed along with everything else. She's also insisted that it's more convenient for her to cook dinner for everyone, and he hasn't made up his mind yet whether it really is more convenient, or whether she just doesn't want to give up control of her kitchen. No skin off his nose anyway; she's a good cook, and the absolutely-plain grilled chicken breasts he'd gotten used to living on with Pop taste better when she marinates them in lemon and sage, or gives them a Southwestern chipotle rub.

He usually comes back to his room after dinner, to give the family some time together, but now and then Brendan will ask if he'd like to hang out and watch something. Tommy still doesn't talk much, hasn't really been a talker since he got a mouthful of loose baby teeth one Saturday morning when he was six and awake too early, too chatty about dinosaurs for the comfort of the hung-over monster that sometimes lived inside Pop.

But if Brendan asks, he'll stay. Tonight, they're watching a spring training game (the Pirates are going to suck this year, but what's new? They always suck), and Rosie actually climbs into his lap after her bath and hands him a book. "Read, Uncle Tommy."

"What?" he says to Brendan, slightly panicked.

"Bedtime story," Brendan says, and gestures to his younger daughter. "Won't kill ya, go ahead."

So Tommy settles her more securely on his left side, a fragrant bundle of curly-headed little girl, and reads out loud about a mouse ballerina and her best friend. The whole book is pink and ribbony and way too cute, and Rosie is squirmy and bouncy and bony, jabbing him with an elbow or a knee every thirty seconds, so it's making him nervous. He throws Brendan the stink-eye once or twice, but Bren's ignoring him, with a little quirk at the corner of his mouth that says he knows exactly what's going on.

"You missed a page!" Rosie insists. "You missed the page about school and the big parade!" She seizes the book and flips back. "Start over."

"No. I'm not starting over," he tells her.

"Please? It's all messed up. Please do it so it's right this time?" She turns her head and squints one big pleady blue eye up at him, and for some reason he likes the idea of starting over and getting it right, so he sighs and lets her turn back to the beginning.

"What do you say, Rosie?" Brendan reminds her.

"Thank you," she sing-songs, and Tommy settles her in the crook of his arm again.

"Now listen. Before I start to read, you have to stay still, okay? No wiggling. Okay." So he starts again, and this time he reads more slowly, not keeping the tiredness out of his voice, and before he gets halfway through she puts her head on his shoulder. Two pages before the end, her breathing gets loud, and she suddenly seems hot, like she's turned into some kind of kid-shaped heat pack. He looks down at her, surprised to find that she's asleep. He stops reading, and says his brother's name in the same slow soft voice he'd used for the book.

Brendan looks up and smiles. "She's out? Good. You mind sticking her in the bed?" Tommy wouldn't mind, in fact. Really, it's just that he has no idea where to put the book, or how to get out of the chair without waking Rosie. He makes a face, thinking logistics, and Brendan reaches over for the book. "She won't wake up. Don't worry," Brendan says.

"Okay," he says back, and stands up, holding her head to his shoulder with his free hand so she doesn't fall over. No more knees and elbows now, she feels completely boneless in his arms at the moment, a densely-packed lump of kid with floppy bits. Up the stairs, into the red-and-white bedroom on the right, and Tess comes in from Emily's pink room and helps him get the covers turned down enough to tuck Rosie in. Rosie stirs when her head hits the pillow, but she holds up her arms and pulls Tommy back down to kiss him.

"Night," she says in a tired whispery voice. Tess tucks the covers up around her and kisses her cheek, turns out the lamp, follows Tommy out.

On the way down the stairs, he can't keep the smile off his face. "That was weird," he says to Tess. Her eyebrows go up, but he keeps talking anyway. "It was like her temperature went up ten degrees and she gained ten pounds all in about two minutes. Kids always do that when they go to sleep?"

"Pretty much." And Tess, surprised and charmed by a smile she has seen so rarely that she almost doesn't recognize his face, smiles back. Maybe this is going to work out okay after all. He's actually _talking_ to her. "Of course, they tend to grow out of that. Emily doesn't do that anymore."

"No?" They come into the living room and settle again, Tommy back in the easy chair and Tess on the floor between Brendan's knees.

"No. You know, when Em was little and she got sleepy, she'd get these bright red spots in the middle of her cheeks. It was adorable."

"Just like a doll," Brendan agrees, and leans forward to rub Tess' shoulders.

"Mmm, nice," she says.

And out of the good evening, during which nobody has screamed or thrown a plate or hit someone else, Tommy suddenly feels the blackest despair he's felt in a long time. He's gotten used to a certain constant level of it, with spikes coming at really dark times – Mom's death, the friendly-fire death of his squad, his court-martial – but this is _bad_. Maybe it just seems worse here, in this nice house where nobody screams.

He's jealous. He wants his brother's life so desperately and feels so unworthy of it that he's not sure he can keep breathing. The college education, the secure job, the respect, the goodwill in his house. The sweet girls. The way Tess looks at Brendan, like he's her sun and moon and stars.

It's the middle of an inning, but he can't sit there anymore. He gets up and says, "Good night," before he can poison the good evening with his black feelings, and escapes to his room, to wonder whether he's fit to associate with normal people at all.

The therapist at Leavenworth had warned him about this. Undergoing a major life change, reentering a family with a painful history, blah blah blah, that sort of thing, was likely to cause emotional upheaval, and he was to expect it. He was to write down these feelings and what he thinks caused them, and watch for a pattern of conflict, because it will occur in places where his feelings are sore. He doesn't want to, but he makes himself get out the journal he's supposed to write in and starts scribbling away, and then he finds himself writing about starting over with Rosie's book. That was another thing the therapist had made a point of, the fresh-start aspect of leaving the Corps.

At the time, he'd mainly been thinking of it as exile. Leaving this organization after twelve years, with no rank and no history of exemplary service, was excruciating. It still hurts like a toothache and a sense of loss dogs him all day. It's not as bad as when he went AWOL after the bombing, escaping Iraq through a series of methods so convoluted and involving enormous risk that the officers he told the story to could barely believe it. Staying incog for eight months and managing to compete in a tournament so big that there was absolutely zero chance of getting through it unrecognized, and therefore unprosecuted, was incredibly stupid. The drive to provide Manny's family with financial support was part of why he'd done it, but he now thinks that maybe he'd come to the point where he _wanted _to get caught, just to avoid the torture of thinking what might happen. Maj. Abramson, the therapist he saw before his court-martial, had said that he found it "intriguing" that Tommy had chosen to come home and live with his father to train, but he didn't explain.

Tommy's still not certain what purpose his life will have now, either. Sure, he's training for Sparta, but what about afterward? He is starting to realize that won't have the body for full-time fighting much longer; he's almost thirty and he'd lost a lot of condition in Leavenworth that he's just now getting back.

He wouldn't be much good as a trainer, he thinks, he's too impatient and too focused on his own strengths and weaknesses to be able to analyze other people's. Maybe he could run a gym, but where would it be, and where would he get the money to start it up, and then there are just so many things about operating a business that he doesn't know. Construction? Boring. Security? Worse. He's thought about being a cop, but he's not sure how the military prison stint and his discharge status will fly. Firefighter? Maybe. Pop's buddy at the mill in the 'Burgh could probably get him a job, not that he really _wants_ to do the same thing Pop did.

So, meanwhile, he'll train. Just got to push through to the other side of Sparta, just got to get through that, and then he'll regroup. Focus now, explore later. He puts the notebook away, brushes his teeth, strips down and climbs into bed.

As he's drifting off to sleep, he hears Rosie's voice in his head again, high and sweet and a little bit imperious, "Start over. Please? Please start over so it can be right this time."

_Author's Note: my brother is a huuuuuuuge longtime Pittsburgh Pirates fan, but even **he** admits that they perennially suck._

_And listen: I know that these first chapters have been pretty much emotional-healing stuff, and that's going to continue, but more angst is coming. This is what makes a story, putting people through hell and then watching what they do and how they deal with it. Buckle your seatbelts._

_It may be a week or so before I can update again. These first chapters practically wrote themselves, they went so fast. That won't happen with the rest of the story. OOC stuff is coming, by the way._

_I'd love reviews! Especially if you think I've left holes so far – let me know what I'm missing, and I'll try to address it in the future._


	6. Chapter 6: A Pack of Panthers

Part 6: **A Pack of Panthers**

The morning after he's successfully read Rosie to sleep, Tess pounces. She asks him if he'd be willing to babysit the kids on Friday night, so she and Brendan can go to some party a friend of theirs is hosting. "We won't be gone long," she says. "And you're so good with them. You won't have any trouble at all."

He considers it silently. Maybe it had been beginner's luck, but maybe not. He'd like to think that he's good with kids, anyway. "Sure."

"We'll go over bedtime routines this evening, okay? And which videos they can watch." Tess says, bouncing on her toes. "Oh, thanks, Tommy, that will be so great!"

He's not fooled, not much. She wants to go to the party, but he also suspects that she just wants him to feel useful. Tess has noticed and remarked on his policy of keeping things neat and clean and doing whatever he can around the house, and he's probably been too transparent about enjoying her praise. But the girls... they're so sweet. The way they've accepted him without a whole lot of explanation has really amazed him. They don't even know him, and still they hug him good night, bring him school artwork to see, and in Rosie's case, treat him to long introductions to each stuffed animal on her bed, about sixteen of them. He amuses himself by imagining the fluffy bunnies and kitties and giraffes and puppies in flak helmets.

It's a pretty decent week. When he calls Pop to check in and get the week's refinements to his conditioning program, Pop seems cheerful and easy-going. And when he goes through the usual bedtime stuff with Emily and Rosie twice that week, with Tess down the hall in case he should forget something important, like tooth-brushing or story or turning off the light, the only thing he forgets is to make sure they pick out tomorrow's clothes and lay them out before bed, and that's fixed easily enough.

A group of Tess' friends is packed up like girl gangsters in the kitchen when he comes through on Wednesday afternoon, heading for a protein shake because Frank worked him hard all day and he's dying for some quick nutrition. True, it was probably not a good idea to charge into a room full of women while shirtless and smelling like a whole locker room, but he's starving and single-minded, and it's only when he notices the pack of overgrown cheerleaders in the kitchen, all lithe and lean like jungle cats in their yoga pants and their highlights and their lip gloss, staring at him, that he realizes that he's made a mistake.

The yoga-panthers scatter to let him near the fridge, and then they cluster and chatter while he's getting a cup and some ice. "Hi! You must be Tommy!"

"Wow, I love your ink!"

"Hi, I'm Lindsey."

"Wow, where do you work out?"

"Hi, I'm Amanda."

"Want to come to hot yoga with us next week?"

"Hi, I'm Jessica."

He doesn't respond to any of the comments, just nods and apologizes for the noise he's about to make, and turns on the blender a little bit longer than he really needs to, just to keep the yakking at bay. As soon as the shake is done, he grabs it and his duffel and escapes to his room, avoiding Tess' eye, feeling like he's just closed the cage door on six hungry tigers.

Whew. Girls in a group are just as terrifying now as they were when he was thirteen. This house is about as estrogen-packed as he can handle most days anyway, with three females in it, and getting to the gym, to the familiar company of men, is a huge relief.

He's been going back and forth with Frank over the last week concerning whether or not he will accept an offer of sponsorship from the maker of his favorite brand of gloves. He's not sure why he's so unsettled about it, except maybe that it's like getting money for nothing, and he's always earned his. He's still got some saved up from his time in the Marines, mostly because while he was in, there was very little to spend it on, other than the weekly Saturday nights at the bar with the guys, and even that expense went away while they were all in-country. So he's not completely broke, just sort of broke. Also, if he agrees, he'll have to allow them to use his picture and name, and maybe even do a TV commercial, though he's trying to get out of that particular horror. Maybe they can just use footage from Sparta or something, he hopes.

On the other hand, it's not like he's cheating and saying he uses something that he doesn't; it's the brand he'd pick anyway. And there's the bare fact that he does actually need to support himself while he's training. So maybe it would be okay. And maybe he could buy a used car, something to get around in rather than running or biking everywhere.

The other thing he's banging heads with Frank over is Frank's absolute insistence on what Frank likes to call "sportsmanship." Tommy thinks it's unnecessary to help your opponent up after a bout, shake hands, all that shit. He's changed, he thinks – as a young wrestler, he'd always been happy to help a guy up after pinning him. But maybe that had been one more way to say, "I'm better than you. See? Here I am still standing, helping _you _up."

He'd had one CO in Iraq, a real leatherneck SOB, who always barked at them, "The enemy must be defeated. Completely. Ignominiously. You are to grind him into the dust and leave him destroyed." That's the Corps way, in Tommy's opinion. _Let_ those Navy pussies go ahead with their "Rock 'em and sock 'em, but don't lose your shirt" conservatism; they've got expensive equipment to protect. Marines' equipment is usually POS; it's nearly always hand-me-down crap from the other services and every grunt has to learn how to Jerry-rig stuff just so it will _goddamn work_, because otherwise you got nothing.

Sometimes he forgets he's not still a Marine, and then when he does remember, it hurts like hell all over again.

Thursday he finally capitulates and tells Frank, "Go ahead and call those guys and tell them I said okay, but no close-ups. They can have photos, and they can have footage of me fighting or working in the gym if they want, but I'm not talking to a camera." Frank nods at him and then sends him out to spar with Marco Santos, after reminding him to go easy and exercise control, that this is a sparring session with a real partner, not war on the punching bag.

He wouldn't say so out loud, but Tommy likes Marco. The kid is big and sweet and goofy, when he's got the gloves off, and his exuberance when talking about music or girls or roller-coasters is sort of puppy-like. In the ring, though, he's formidable. He's good on the mat, but at somewhat of a disadvantage because of his long arms and legs; Tommy's more compact shape has always been tougher to pin down. But those long arms are an advantage when standing up, and Marco can punch pretty hard, so a sparring session with him can be a challenge. When Tommy holds back, which Frank is always after him to do, to work on his control, drill on a certain hold or type of defense – the brainwork, Tommy calls it – Marco can tap him out about half the time. If Frank lets them just go at it free-form, Tommy can take Marco down, work a hold, and tap the younger guy out five times out of six.

He doesn't let go and kick the shit out of anybody at Frank's gym the way he'd done with Mad Dog Grimes, who is such a complete dickhead that it's a pleasure to hurt him. For one thing, Frank doesn't like the naked display of testosterone-induced fury, and for another, all the guys who regularly work at Frank's gym are actually pretty cool, with most of them fighting from an attitude of "what can I learn about my body and what it can do" rather than one of "let me show you what a badass I am." Tommy doesn't mind showing sportsmanship with them, because they're starting to feel like friends. This may be one reason Frank agreed to take him on: Frank can tell how much Tommy wants to learn. But sometimes Frank must feel frustrated, because Tommy can tell he's not always getting what Frank wants to teach him. They both must be frustrated.

_Shit. This must be how Brendan felt when he couldn't get Pop's instructions._ Seems like every week shows him some other way he's a lot like his older brother.


	7. Chapter 7: A Rescue

Part 7: **A Rescue**

On Friday afternoon, he's out of patience with the brainwork and the holding back and the sportsmanship crap, and he'd like to just finish the week with whaling away at the bag, or better still, at somebody, because his dreams have been full of nightmare images of blood on dust-covered bodies, and blood on sand, and blood on Mom's kitchen linoleum, and it's only the knowledge that there will be no blood involved in an evening spent with two delicate sweet little girls that's kept him going through the day.

At 6:15, he's showered and dressed and telling Brendan and Tess not to worry, that he's got everything under control. That he'll check off everything on Tess' list, and it's all going to be fine, and they should enjoy their party, because he'll be fine. The girls are great kids. Don't worry. Have a good time. No, really, it'll be fine. They're so sweet.

So now it's Friday night at half past eight, and it's Emily's bedtime and well past Rosie's, and they are _not sweet_. They are _fucking exhausting_. In the past two hours, he's fed them chicken nuggets and apple slices and green beans, read three stories, given the two of them a bath at the same time, gotten his t-shirt soaked when Rosie splashed, combed wet hair, tugged pajamas onto resisting wiggly bodies, dished up two miniature bowls of vanilla ice cream, insisted on toothpaste, read another story, matched pink-and-purple striped leggings with a size-7 pink tunic for Saturday, turned out the light, been called back in for a hug, been called back in because he forgot the purple socks and they have to sit just so on top of the stack of leggings and tunic, been called back in for another hug because the first one didn't count, turned out the light again, put dishes in the dishwasher, realized that he left the bathwater in the tub, gone to let it out, and ordered Emily, who is prowling the hall insisting that she's not sleepy, back to bed. He can feel his eyes pop almost out of his head as he restrains himself from yelling. Instead, he leans down to her level and makes his voice quiet and medium-menacing. "Emily. I said go. To. Bed. Did you hear me?"

"I'm not sleepy," she explains again, as if she is the voice of pure reason.

"I don't care," he says. "It's bedtime, and that is that. Now go."

"Okay," she says, way too chipper for somebody who's usually asleep at this time of night, and goes back into her room. He checks to make sure that the light's off.

And now he is _worn out_. He was in the weight room all morning and doing Frank's weird Zen exercises all afternoon, his brain hurts, he is sick to death of damn Beethoven, and the entire business of putting two little girls to bed has been as easy as putting socks on an octopus. He is meaning to go change his shirt, unbelievably still damp despite the action-packed evening, when he goes into the kitchen for some water. At this point he sees that when he was distracted, _somebody_, cough cough, has gotten into Tess' eight-ounce cans of Coke, which she rations out to herself once a day.

This is one of the few forbidden food items in the house, other than bacon, that really tempt him, and although he tries to ignore the existence of the eight-pack of little red cans, he secretly counts them every day. Well, _of course_ Miss Emily-can't-sleep is on the loose tonight, she's jazzed on caffeine. He shakes his head and tosses the empty can into the recycling bin. Geez. At least he can relax now the girls are in bed; there's another spring baseball game on and he can watch the Sox and the Yanks bash each other around without even caring which one wins.

Then the doorbell rings. _God,_ will this night just ever _stop_? He clutches at his head, swears twice under his breath, and goes to open it.

There's a girl on the front walk. No, not a girl, a woman about his age, and she's looking inquisitively to her left before turning back to him, and her face changes from anticipation to the blankest blank face he's ever seen. Her eyes widen and her lips part, and then she goes from blank to confused. "Can I help you?" he says, feeling conspicuous and resentful in the doorway, and she stares another couple of seconds before she answers him.

"Um... is Tess home?" she asks.

Before he replies, he takes a few seconds to look her over. This is not one of those yoga-pants panthers who were clogging up the kitchen earlier in the week; this is someone who clearly has a lot less time to spend on her looks. Pink t-shirt, jeans, sneaks, brown ponytail, nice rack. She's on the short side and she's pretty, but not _more_ than pretty, with a scrubbed sort of face that makes her look young. "Nah, she's out." The girl blinks, and although her face doesn't change that much, he can see that she's really disappointed. "Be back in a couple of hours, I guess."

"Oh," she says, and looks down. "Well. Okay. Thanks." She starts to turn. "Have a good – "

He interrupts her, mostly because she looks so disappointed. "Can I, you know, give Tess a message?"

She hesitates a minute, then shakes her head, reluctantly. "No, thanks. I just... I thought, well, I'm in the neighborhood, so I'll stop to see if I can have a cup of coffee with Tess and she can listen to me bitch about my day." Her cupid's-bow mouth twists into a wry, lopsided smile. "I'll come by some other – "

Emily is suddenly there pulling on the leg of his sweats and interrupting. "Uncle Tommy, I just can't sleep. And Rosie got up and did a poo in the bathroom and she won't – Kelleeeee!" And she's suddenly out the door, arms held up to the girl in pink. "I _missed _you!"

The girl's picking her up and laughing, and she's one of those people who light up when they really smile. "Hey, peanut! I missed you too."

"Where's Jack?" Emily wants to know, and while this Kelly person is explaining that the boys have gone to do something fun with their dad, Tommy's making connections. Jack must be this neighborhood kid that Rosie keeps talking about, so the girl in pink is his mom, and he suddenly feels better because he's placed somebody who lives in their world.

"So, wait, Em, what did you say about Rosie?" he asks, and about then he hears the noise of a four-year-old trying to get someone's attention from upstairs, and he finally lets fly with one of the swear words he's been keeping in all evening. Emily gasps. "Sorry. Emily, please don't tell your mom I said that."

"Listen, um..." the girl in pink says hesitantly, setting Emily down, "I do have some mom cred, and you look pretty stressed at the moment. Would you like me to take care of that?"

There is nothing he would like better than to have somebody who knows what the hell they're actually doing to take care of that, but he doesn't think Tess would approve. He sighs. "I'd better – "

Emily says, "Kelly used to keep me sometimes when I was little and Mommy was at the hospital with Rosie. She can do it."

He looks up from Emily to Kelly, who's trying not to laugh, and then she does, but it's the kind of laugh that feels friendly. "Look, I know that panicked face you're wearing right now. I haven't been a parent for eight years without _making _that panicked face too many times to count. Let me deal with Miss Rosie, and then I'll take off and leave you in a peaceful house. You look like you could use a break. I'm Kelly Doherty."

"Thank you," he says fervently, awkwardly, and swings the door open for her. She heads straight for the stairs (_good, she really has been here before_) and bounds up them, and in about thirty seconds there's a delighted cry of "Kelleeeee!" from the should-be-in-bed Rosie, so he figures maybe he did do the right thing. He tucks Emily in bed again, turns out the light again, and reminds her that she needs to stay in bed, or he's never ever babysitting her ever again. Ever. Closes her door. Heaves a huge sigh. Passes the closed bathroom door, where the quiet voice of a sane adult in charge filters out to the hall, and he realizes he owes this Kelly person _but huge._

So he goes downstairs and starts a pot of coffee, and as she's coming down the stairs he meets her in the living room. "Hey. Thanks."

"It's okay," she says, and smiles. "It wasn't as bad as Emily made out. I think she was just jonesing for some more attention." She brushes a piece of hair out of her face with her hand, and he catches a glimpse of the wide silver band on it. _Okay, so she's married, a mom, probably safe, no sleek yoga-panther predator._

"Well, anyway... thanks. I appreciate the rescue. And hey – I'm not Tess, but I made a pot of decaf, and I can listen to you bitch about your day, if you like. I owe you at least that much." And he smiles too. "I'm Tommy Conlon."

She hesitates a minute, and then says, "You know, my day has been so ultra-sucky that I will take you up on that offer, thanks."

They go into the kitchen, and Tommy pours two cups of coffee. "Cream and sugar?" He points to the breakfast bar and says, "Have a seat."


	8. Chapter 8: Just like the girl

**Part 8: Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad**

"Cream and sugar?" he asks, pouring two cups and directing her to have a seat at the breakfast nook.

"Yes, please." When she sees that he takes his black, she adds, "I'm a coffee wimp. Can't drink it without the extras."

"I like extras myself, but I'm off sugar at the moment. And anyway, I got used to drinking it any way I could get it, when I was in – " and he stops. The last thing he wants to mention is Iraq. "– in the military," he finishes.

There's a small silence, and when he glances up she's looking at him intently. He feels his eyes get narrow, as if she's some opponent trying to stare him down in the ring, and almost immediately she sits back, lifting her head up and nodding as if she's finally figured out something. "You're the Marine," she says with such certainty that it seems almost reassuring; she's described him the way he's thought about himself for so long.

At least she hasn't said "war hero." Which is something that makes him feel sick to his stomach even now, because war heroes don't take off and leave their units behind. Anybody uses those words to him, he doesn't talk to them. It's like a flashing neon sign over their heads that says, THIS PERSON DOESN'T KNOW YOU.

"You have that look," she adds, looking down into her cup. "Jarhead. You know? Haircut or not. There's just something... see, my daddy was a Marine." There's an odd familiarity about the way she says _my daddy_, some accent there that definitely isn't Philly. Some accent he knows, though. "Something about the way you carry yourself. Some look in the eye." She smiles, still looking into the cup. "My husband did a tour of duty in Iraq with the Army and he never had it. My brother's career Navy, and _he_ doesn't have that Marine thing, whatever it is."

He knows what she's talking about. He can't define it, either, but he knows it. She's right.

"You're out now?" she asks.

_Out_. Such a little word for what he is now: discharged, disgraced, ashamed, betrayed, dishonored. And alone. But yeah, "out" is technically accurate, so he nods.

"You miss it, don't you? The Corps." Her gaze is steady but matter-of-fact. No pity in it, just something honest. Her eyes are very light blue with a darker ring around them, lighter than Pop's eyes, or Brendan's even, an aqua-blue _so _pale it's like looking through crystal. Like those old daguerreotypes from Civil War times, where the person in the image has eyes so light they're practically see-through.

But it's a nosy-bitch sort of question, and how she thinks she's got the right to say such a thing, he doesn't know. Not to mention, how the hell she could _tell_ is just beyond him. He doesn't know her. She doesn't know him. _Jesus_, why did he think having coffee with this woman would be a good idea?

He doesn't answer, just looks at her with the same sort of mean-SOB face that has forced any number of fight-seeking drunks at bars, or Leavenworth rowdies for that matter, to reconsider the wisdom of assaulting him. She just looks back, calm. His "back the hell off" expression isn't even fazing her in the least. Is she insensitive, or just stupid? "Daddy missed it. I don't mean he missed the war, for God's sake, but he said he missed his brothers."

Once again, he can't speak through the way those words have hit him in the solar plexus. _'Missed his brothers.' Bitch, you have no idea_.

"When I was a little girl, Daddy told me he thought it was a good thing he served in wartime, because he said it made everything afterward look easy."

_Huh_. He's not really aware of snorting his disdain for such an idea, but it must come out, because she looks startled for a second, and then the corner of her mouth turns up just a little. "Not true for you, I guess."

Where had her father served, the fucking _Gulf War? _That had been a damn cakewalk, proportionately speaking – fewer than 300 US soldiers had died in Desert Storm. No, she'd be a lot younger if that were the case, and up close he can see she's actually about his age. There are freckles across her nose, under those ice-chip eyes. "He serve in 'Nam?"

She nods. "Right at the end, '71-'72.'

_God._ Only a few years after Pop. Guy was probably just like Pop, too. "He tell you his war stories? Or he take 'em down to the VFW?"

"VFW, I guess." As they've been talking, little by little he's been narrowing down what he knows about that accent: Southern. Sort of. Not Deep South, though, not the stereotypical Georgia accent, all dripping with molasses. Not Ala-_got-damn_-bama, the way PFC Dooley used to say it. And not the gentility of Lt. Baker's south-of-Richmond elegant drawl, either. Definitely somebody he served with used to talk like this, and it was definitely an enlisted guy. Hell, probably a good third of the Marines he knew had been good-old-boy Southerners.

_I'm going to peg that accent_, he thinks, _if I can get her to talk more. _"You _guess_ your dad went to the VFW with his war stories?"

"He never told _me_ any war stories, no."

Well, neither had Pop. Not until after it was too late to do Tommy any good. And even now, all Pop will say is that bad things happened. "Grenades," he might say, or "wicked covering fire," but that's it. Not what happened to the guys. Not what the aftermath looked like. Not how it felt to be the only guy in fatigues standing.

Tommy is silent, seeing in his memory what's left of a platoon after bombs take it out, and he suddenly has to_ move,_ or it will only get worse. He takes his cup back to the coffeemaker and fills it up again. Leans against the counter. Asks, "He won't talk about the war now?" partly to distract himself, and partly because he wonders if telling the stories ever gets easier.

She looks up, apparently startled. "I don't – " she starts to say and then her voice breaks. "See... he died when I was eleven. So I don't know." She swipes at her eyes, and then adds abruptly, "I should go." Her voice is steady now.

If she goes now, Tommy will sit in this good house and think about the way people look when they've had limbs and heads blown off, when they've bled out into that cream-colored sand. When they've been burned black. He won't be able to stop seeing it, and there will be no one who knows what it's like, and he'll be alone with the horror.

He won't even be able to leave, go take a run to clear his mind. He has to stay with the girls.

So he says, "Don't go yet. Tell me about him. What happened?" So many of those 'Nam vets wound up homeless or alcoholics or on drugs, or driving their '78 Buicks into the river, or blowing their brains out with their own service revolvers, that he thinks he's prepared for anything she might say.

She takes a deep breath. "Mine explosion."

There hasn't been a mine accident in Pennsylvania in his memory. In fact, there hasn't been a working coal mine in Pennsylvania in his _lifetime_. "Where was this?" A thought occurs – that accent, is it West Virginia? Or Kentucky, maybe? Cpl Larry Beech had grown up in Lexington before moving to California and then joining the Corps.

"Southmountain Coal Company Mine No. 3. Wise County, Virginia. Pearl Harbor Day, 1992. Nine dead." Her voice is matter-of-fact. Almost. "You know anything about coal mines?"

He shakes his head. That accent is coming clearer, probably because she's talking about home. Yeah, Virginia. He doesn't know where Wise County is, but it must be in the mountains, which is starting to make some sense. Caleb Ward and Cody McPeak were cousins from Giles County in the mountain part of Virginia. They'd lived on Angels' Rest Peak, which he only remembered because the name was so pretty. They'd both had that twang and lilt, the way the words of a sentence went up and down all syncopated, and they'd both been prone to sticking R's where they weren't necessary, just like this girl.

When he'd last seen Ward and McPeak, they'd been lying within arms' length of each other, just like they'd been patrolling. Both had been covered in blood, and McPeak's hands were reaching out to his cousin. He sucks in a deep breath and makes the vision go away.

"Faulty ventilation. Methane-level safety monitors bypassed for production. A rainy day. And at least one miner with cigarettes and a butane lighter." She sounds clinical, but there's a little girl's devastation under it. "You could see coal dust in the air for three miles. They let us out of school, but the Plowboy Mine they kept open. They only shut down production two days later, when they brought the men out."

"Did you see?" he asks softly.

She nods. "Stretchers covered with canvas. But by then the weather had changed, and the wind kept blowing the canvas back. I saw. They were not... recognizable. Almost didn't look like anything human."

"Then you know," he says, almost to himself. His throat is tight. He doesn't want to think about explosions anymore. "Hard to lose a parent," he says, finally.

And she gives him that level look again. Still no pity in it, just the recognition that she knows, bone-deep, that the world is an unkind place and sometimes unbearably cruel. "How old were _you_?"

"Seventeen." He inhales and tucks away the mental photo of Mom gasping for breath. "My mother. Lung cancer."

"That's a hard age. Not that there's a good one," she says.

He nods. They sit in silence for a few minutes, but finally he breaks it. "So. We've gotten pretty far from your sucky day."

She shrugs a little. Sighs. "Well. Work, mostly. You know. I mean, I can complain about it to a girlfriend, but I don't know that anybody else would think it would be enough to complain about."

"Whaddya do?"

"I'm a nurse," she says. Yeah, okay. He can see that. She'd be the kind of person who'd make a career out of helping people. He nods as she keeps talking. "And I love being a nurse, but I recently had to change jobs. I had to leave the ER for a position in a private practice, which is good because I need the regular 9-to-5 hours. But," and she sighs. "I know, I know, it's ridiculous to complain. But it's _so boring_."

"Mmm." Back to deciphering that accent. It's absolutely Southern. Texas, maybe? The Texas accents he's most familiar with are peppered with Spanish, though: Manny. Pilar. Tommy Lee Jones, for that matter.

"I don't even work for a GP. It's a practice of three orthopedic surgeons, so I'm able to start working on getting my certification as an orthopedic nurse, which should boost my income a little. And it's definitely more interesting than some job in a GP office or a pediatrician's office, where all I would do would be take temperatures and histories... and vaccinate babies, and..." she waves her hand, annoyed. "That would be far worse. But everything is so routine and settled and scheduled and dull. I _miss_ the ER. I miss the hustle. I miss the crazy."

"The crazy?"

"Yeah. You know, the chaos. The hurry, the panic. I like being the only calm one in the room." And she smiles. "I love that. It's a power trip, I guess. Maybe because I'm an emotional person myself."

"You seem pretty calm to me." She dealt with the kid drama pretty calmly, anyway, he thinks.

"I generally am. Unless I happen to be..." she tails off, looking suddenly both embarrassed and highly upset, "having a sucky day. Like today. Today, I am a fucking basket case. Oh, _God_." She puts her face in her hands.

It has to be something besides work. Marriage trouble? her mother's dying? _Something_. He gets up, grabs the coffee pot and the flavored liquid creamer Tess likes, brings them to the table. Pours some more coffee into her half-full cup, returns the pot to the hot plate. By the time he sits down again, she seems more composed.

"Thanks," she says, stirring creamer in, not looking at him. "I'm not usually so... such a mess as to buttonhole complete strangers with my problems. But it's the first time they've seen him in almost a year, and I could tell Jack was frightened. Which I don't know whether he picked that up from me, or whether he was scared on his own. I think he remembers."

"Remembers what?" Because this is confusing the hell out of him. Who is she talking about?

She's silent, turning the cup in her hands. He's suddenly remembering a scene from a few years ago, right after he'd come back to Pittsburgh, before he'd started fighting. It was when he was still trying to decide what he was going to do, in the short period of time he knew he had before they'd send the MP's for him. He knew that it would happen eventually, because he deserved that, but he didn't know _how _long he would have. The vague idea that he might just join Pop in the black hole of alcohol had turned out to be kind of a bust, and even sitting in the same diner booth with him was awkward and painful. The diner smelled like Mom, and Pop smelled like Pop, and Tommy had been disoriented by some kind of rip in time. Was it the hellish now, or was he still a teenager hoping to duck Pop's heavy backhand? Pop asked questions, and he couldn't answer because their points of connection – Mom, Brendan, wrestling, the Corps – were likewise awkward and painful. Afghanistan or Iraq? There was no possible answer that wouldn't bring up more questions. He couldn't bear the questions, could only ignore them and hope they'd stop coming.

"Sorry," he says when it's clear she isn't going to answer.

"I just can't," she says, and sips her coffee. "It's too complicated. My feelings are too tangled up. And you know how usually when you just talk about how you feel, get it all out in the open – that clears the decks and you can get back to whatever it is you're supposed to be doing? It's not working for this."

"I don't know what you're talking about." He doesn't. What kind of shit is this? Talking about how you feel clears the decks? No, it raises ghosts. Is she _insane_?

She raises those eerie eyes and gives him a suspicious glare. Then she rolls her eyes and snorts through her nose. "Oh, right. You're a guy. '_What _feelings?' You all want to pretend you don't have them. They're messy, and they distract you from the task at hand."

Well, _duh._ "Yeah." Without meaning to do it, he finds himself crossing his arms and lowering his brows so he can look out from under them. It's an intimidation move, and he's not sure why he's feeling compelled to make it. Habit, maybe.

"Well, what do you do when they're too big for you to pretend you don't have them?" she demands, leaning toward him.

She's gotta be kidding. He does what everybody else does. "Take off. Get the hell outta Dodge. Focus on something else. Hit stuff."

And she flinches, hard.

Silence.

She slowly sits back in her seat, looking at the table and nodding to herself in a way that makes him uncomfortable. As if he's suddenly landed a jab he didn't mean to throw right on her jaw. "Hit stuff," she repeats softly, in a voice that's suddenly devoid of her usual expressive lilt, almost robotic. "Yeah." She exhales through her nose again, and a picture of his mother nursing a bruised jaw with an icepack and a restorative cigarette flashes into his vision, causing a rush of shame so intense that he feels his ears go red.

"Not people," he says, trying to explain. He uncrosses his arms to gesture. "_Stuff._" She's not looking at him now, and he has the uncomfortable feeling that he might actually have scared her. Especially if her daddy was anything like Pop. "Like tires and concrete blocks and punching bags. Not people." A skeptical look darts over her face, and then it's back to that carefully blank expression. "Not outside the ring, anyway." Well, there had been bar fights, but he hadn't started them. "Not anybody who can't defend himself. Not women. Not children. Ever."

She doesn't say anything and doesn't look up, but he thinks her shoulders might have relaxed a little. He goes on explaining, because he feels like he has to somehow. "The guys in the ring want to be there. They know how to fight and how to defend themselves, and it's... safe." At this, she glances up, and he sees her eyes are wet again. "Safe, yeah. Nobody's gonna die. Nobody's gonna get seriously injured. The ref will stop the fight before it even gets close. I can't hurt anybody in the ring, and nobody is going to be there unless they're prepared and they're expecting the violence. Nobody's there unless they sign up for it. And any guy in the ring with me is going to be at least about my size. _Safe_, see?"

She pulls in a deep shaky breath. "I forgot you hit people for a living."

"Yeah." _Yeah, that's about all I'm worth_, he thinks bitterly. He's already put some feelers out – he won't be acceptable for law enforcement because of the DD. Ditto for firefighter or EMT, basically any civil sector job. If he lived in Virginia he wouldn't be able to vote.

"Why?" she asks. Again with that level honest look. Does she do this to everybody, or is there something inside him that lights him up with targets for her to hit? He's about to tell her to go to hell and walk out, but there's something so earnest about her questions. "Do you just have that many issues to avoid?" She shakes her head immediately. "No, that was rude. I didn't mean that. I mean, that's a – a _career _choice. Why is it satisfying to hit people for a living? I don't get it, and it – " her voice has gone hoarse with emotion, "– this thing I don't get, it just, it just matters so much. To me. That I be able to get it somehow. That I could understand, because then – " She breaks off and wipes her eyes again, trying to get hold of herself with deep shaky breaths.

"Okay," he says. He starts by explaining he doesn't have a lot of options right now because of the DD, and that he needs the money. And that he is, for too many reasons to name, really good at it. And that it keeps him in contact with his father and brother, instead of making it easy for him to slip into the shadow world that war veterans too often find themselves in. And that it helps him fight his demons. That when he tapes his hands up and puts in the mouth guard, he's ready for any nightmare because it's coming at him front and center, and because fighting an enemy he can see, one who can't stab him to the heart with loss and failure and death, is so much better than fighting an enemy he _can't_ see.

Like the monster who lives inside Pop. Like the prisoner of war Mom became, after so much abuse.

He stops there, because suddenly he's exhausted. Tommy hasn't talked this much all at one time since he spent a couple of hours telling Lt. Wayland everything about everything before his court-martial. It feels weird, and not very manly, but also it feels... _light_. He feels light. Like he's been carrying some big-ass gun, or an enormous piece of furniture, and he's just set it down wherever it's supposed to be, and his job with carrying it is finished.

She's been listening, chin propped on her hands, those glacier eyes intent and fierce and tearless. And then she gives up the brave front. Puts her head on her crossed arms on the table, and cries, while he sits at the table and feels awkward. If he's been talking about his demons and nightmares, why is _she_ the one crying?

To hell with this. He gets up, grabs the box of tissues off the kitchen island and brings it to the table, and then leans down next to her there. He's not very comfortable touching people he doesn't know, as a rule, but aren't you supposed to comfort a crying woman? He pats her on the shoulder – gingerly, as if she might be breakable at a touch.

He's not at all prepared for her reaction: all of a sudden she's pushed him away, knocking her chair over, and is standing on the other side of the table poised on the balls of her feet, ready to run. "Whoa. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he says, hands in the air to placate her. "I didn't mean to scare you."

She shudders once from head to foot, and lets out a ragged breath, still looking spooked. "I'm okay," she whispers. "I just... you startled me, but I'm okay." The signs of tears are obvious. Her nose is pink, her lashes are spiky and wet, and her pretty mouth looks swollen.

"Who _hit _you?" he asks, his voice rough with distress. "Somebody has hit you."

"That is none of your business," Kelly says, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders.

"Attagirl," he says, hearing some bizarre echo of Pop's praise somewhere in his head. "You know, you're braver than my mother."

She blinks. Shrugs. "Look, I'm sorry," she says and makes a little face. "Bet you didn't expect to spend two hours talking to a weepy woman. I hope it doesn't make you want to throw yourself out the window."

"Considering that the drop's only about four feet, I wouldn't worry too much about it."

It works. She smiles a rueful sort of smile. And then they hear Brendan and Tess at the front door, laughing together.

_Author's Note: "I Want a Girl (Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad)" is an old song, written about 1911, with lyrics that go like this:_

I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad  
She was a pearl and the only girl that Daddy ever had,  
A good old fashioned girl with heart so true,  
One who loves nobody else but you,  
I want a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad.

_I hope nobody is convinced that I think Tommy has some sort of Oedipus complex. **I don't mean that.** And I don't mean that Kelly is just like Mrs. Conlon – as we'll see, she's clearly a different person in temperament and character – but that she's had to face some of the same issues and circumstances. I do think that he's got some emotional baggage that he's working through, and Kelly happens to be working through some similar stuff from a different angle, so they have some fairly crucial stuff in common. I've often noticed that in real life, it's the people with complementary emotional problems that seem really drawn to each other, maybe due to some sort of subconscious attempt to solve those problems. (You know: the playboy kind of guy who has slept around a lot marries the one-man woman... and then they have issues. The girl with low self-esteem dates a guy who makes her feel better about herself... and the better she feels about herself, the worse he feels. ISSUES.) _

_Question is, will a potential relationship develop between Kelly and Tommy? And if it does, will it be a life-changing event or a disaster? I don't know yet. However, there might be somebody **else **for him down the road, too... I haven't decided. _

_There was indeed a mine explosion at the Southmountain Coal Company Mine No. 3 in Norton in 1992; I remember it myself. Eight people died; I added Kelly's dad. _

_And I would be remiss in not remembering my friend, Lt. Terry Plunk, who was killed while disabling land mines in the Gulf War. Terrific friend, true hero, great loss to the world._


	9. Chapter 9: Another Rescue

**Part 9: Another rescue**

"Good thing I was driving home," Tess is saying as she comes into the kitchen with Brendan behind her. "You would never have gotten us here in one piece."

"Would so," he argues. "Just... slower." His voice is fuzzy and full of laughter, and he grabs Tess by the waist, kissing her neck. It's only seeing Kelly that makes Tess pull away with a cry of joy.

"Kelly! Oh, sweetie, you're back!"

No one seems to have noticed the awkwardness of the way Tommy's been standing in the kitchen, still holding his hands up as if to prove to Kelly that he had not intended to attack her. Instead, Tess makes a beeline for her friend, hugging her and talking a mile a minute.

"I'm so glad to see you! When did you get back? And please tell me you have a phone now! At least you're here! Where are the boys?"

Kelly, embracing Tess, is laughing and crying at the same time, but finally she manages to reply. "So glad to see you too! Let's see... _last week_, and _yes_, I'll give you the number, and – the boys are with Mike this weekend."

"Oh,_ no,_ honey," Tess says, genuinely distressed. "With Mike? All weekend?"

"Are they fucking crazy?" Brendan wants to know. He seems a little lopsided to Tommy, and he can't remember hearing his big brother swear in the house. (The gym, yes. But not where Tess or the girls could hear him.)

Kelly has stopped crying again. _ God,_ women make absolutely no sense to Tommy. "New custody arrangements," she says now.

_Custody? I thought she was married._

"I repeat," Brendan starts, "are they -"

"Watch the language, buster," Tess interrupts him, and then in the next breath she's demanding that Kelly tell her why she hadn't contested the deal.

"I did appeal," Kelly said. "But the judge was apparently all impressed by his completing the anger management course and going to therapy and AA, and Child Services recommended that I not appeal again. So I dropped it. But you had better bet that if either one of them comes home with so much as a teeny-tiny scratch_,_ I will raise _holy hell._"

"Mama Bear," Brendan says with affection, and comes over to hug her. "Girl, you look _goooood._" Immediately Tess whaps him with the back of her hand, and Tommy can't help laughing.

"She's been crying, jerk!" Tess says, mock-annoyed.

"Yes, but she_ does_ look good," Brendan says, and pulls the elastic band out of Kelly's hair and letting it spill down onto her shoulders. "See, her hair's growing back and everything."

"Look, Ma, no bruises," Kelly says, deadpan, and Brendan cracks up.

Tommy catches Tess' eye and mouths, _Is he drunk?_ Tess nods, emphatically.

"Are you _drunk_, Bren?" Kelly says. "Because you're being awfully flirty."

"Nawww. Well, maybe a little." He lets go of Kelly. "Only three beers."

"It was four," Tess corrects, and hugs Kelly again. "So you just came over to see me this evening?"

"Yeah. I was going to whine about how boring my new job is, and then have a sobbing worry-fit over the boys, but you weren't here, so Tommy kindly fed me decaf and listened to me bitch."

"There's still some coffee," Tommy says to his brother. "Been sitting there on the heat for a couple of hours, though, so I wouldn't recommend it." Brendan waves his hand negligently, shaking his head, and Tommy realizes that his father's other son must be a lightweight drinker. Which is funny, really.

Tess starts grilling Kelly about her work schedule and her cell phone number, and then where she's living, and Kelly says it's on Marshall St., which is apparently not all that far away but certainly out of the strictly-residential area of Maple Heights. Tess is appalled. "That's a terrible neighborhood! What on earth possessed you to move there?"

"It's nice," Kelly says defensively. "It's a _house_, not a duplex or an apartment – a nice little foursquare with a porch and a basement, and the back yard is fenced so the boys can go out and play. The previous owner died, and while the will's in probate the estate is renting it out. I've got a six-month lease with month-to-month after that, and it was cheap. I feel perfectly safe there."

Brendan lounges in a kitchen chair looking sleepy and smug, and Tommy leans against the counter with his arms crossed and watches the women talking. This is something he's almost never seen, apart from the pack of yoga panthers the other day, and it's a little bit like watching a nature show on TV. His mother had had no close female friends at all, largely because Pop had discouraged it, either expressly or by simply being a brooding, unpleasant presence in the house. Practically all his life has been spent in the company of men. Women, he is discovering, are _different_. The two of them talk over each other, ask and answer questions out of order, hug, touch each other's hair or hands, and their facial expressions change every six seconds, and yet they always seem to be keeping the threads of the conversation untangled. Tommy got lost in the welter of information in the first two minutes, but every now and then he catches a piece of intel.

Such as: Kelly has been living with her mother in Wilkes-Barre for the better part of two years while the divorce went through. Her boys are named Jack and Martin, and Jack's the same age as Emily. Kelly is impressed that Tess has gone back to school. And she sold all her jewelry because, as she puts it, "Diamonds do not make up for living with a fisty drunk."

Tess eventually turns to Tommy and asks about the girls, and he tells her that they were a little overexcited but things were fine by quarter to nine. "Kelly was a lifesaver," he says to Tess. "Helped deal with a bathroom issue."

"Yeah, you _were_ a little bit deer-in-the-headlights at that point," Kelly says, not quite laughing at him. He likes the way her eyes crinkle up at the corners, and he smiles back. "I really should go," Kelly says, reluctantly. "It's after eleven."

"Holy shit," Tommy says, under his breath. It's late. He's usually asleep by 10:30. To Kelly he says, "Thanks again, really. I have to work on my kid skill set. Glad you stayed."

"Well, thank _you_ for the coffee," she says. "And the talk. I'm really glad to have met you."

Then Tess realizes that Kelly has walked over instead of driving, and she is adamant that she'll drive Kelly home. She grabs her keys in one hand and Kelly's wrist in the other, and pulls her out the door, still talking about how dangerous it is at night on Friday in the big city, and Kelly should know better...

Brendan, still lounging at the table, laughs. Listening to him, Tommy says, "Hey, you _are_ drunk, aren't you?"

"Merely tipsy, bro."

Tommy's going to take the opportunity to needle his big brother a little, make up for all the teasing he missed out on when they were teenagers. "So... you're the flirty drunk, huh? Hittin' on your wife's best friend. Shame on you, man."

"It's kind of a running joke," Brendan says, but there's a blush across his high cheekbones. "I mean, Kelly's pretty, but she's not Tess."

"I dunno, I thought she was kinda hot." Brendan's eyebrows go up, so Tommy elaborates. "Pretty eyes. Nice rack."

"She's okay," Brendan says. "Tess has lots of friends, but I truly love Kelly. She's so... real. And open. I tell her that she must have been a journalist in another life because she asks such nosy questions. Thing is, she's just as willing to answer the nosy questions. She's got a big heart. We both missed her, Tess and me."

"So," Tommy starts, not sure how to ask or even what his real question is, "so her ex-husband is the fisty drunk?" He's actually already figured this out for himself.

"Guy's a bastard. You know, I actually_ liked_ him before I had any clue what was going on. He was pretty subtle to start with, just bruises and stuff, and I think Kelly was ashamed of it, so she didn't tell anybody. Which, as you might guess from just an evening in her company, is pretty wacked-out for her. If she likes somebody, she will pretty much talk their ear off, and she's not shy."

_Nice to know she thinks I'm okay_. "I figured."

And then Brendan laughs. "So if I'm a flirty drunk, Mike's a fisty drunk, and Pop's a psycho drunk, what kind of drunk are you, Tom? Or do you drink?"

"I've been known to indulge. But not during training."

"Well?" Brendan squints one eye at him, the same sort of cocked-head, tell-me-the-truth move that Rosie uses all the time. It's cuter on Rosie.

He thinks a minute. "I'm a bitter sarcastic drunk."

Brendan lets out a snort of laughter. "So you actually talk when you're drunk? That's hilarious." He tilts his head the other way. "Unless you're lying now to get me off your case."

"No, that's pretty much true. You want this coffee, or should I pour it out?" Brendan shakes his head, so Tommy empties the pot and turns off the hot plate before putting the mugs in the dishwasher. He's thinking about how he'd accidentally frightened Kelly earlier, and wishing he'd had the chance to offer some kind of comfort. It was only after they had gotten settled in Tacoma that he'd realized his mother was completely alone except for Tommy himself. How hard that must have been for her as a woman. _He_ was used to it, but he was a guy. And look how much he missed his Corps brothers, even now.

"How bad was it?" he asks Brendan. "With the fisty drunk."

"Bad enough. That last fight, before she left his sorry ass? She wound up with a broken arm, lots of bruises along her torso and her face. He pulled a chunk of her hair out. And although Tess won't say one way or the other, I suspect that there was some sexual abuse too. Which is particularly bad if you know the boys were in the room for at least part of it."

"_Jesus_."

"I don't know if she'd have stayed after that or not, but Jack tried to come to her rescue, and Mike pushed him down, and I think that was the final straw for her."

That had been the final straw for Mom, too – the way that Pop had mercilessly swung his heavy, work-booted foot into teenage Tommy's ribcage, calling him "interfering little shit." The years of backhanded blows directed at his sons, the shoves, the screaming, that hadn't been enough to make Mom change anything, but the sight of her husband kicking the son he was so proud of, _that _had finally opened her eyes.

He finds himself absent-mindedly rubbing his ribs, thinking about Mom, as Brendan speaks again. "I'm sure Kelly's boys will be over here at some point, now that they're back. When you meet them, take a good look at Jack. Kid's got a big heart, but his balls must be even bigger." Tommy doesn't speak for a moment, because he's remembering how furious, and how scared-shitless, he'd been, moving to intercept Pop, and also how sure he'd been that if he didn't get in the middle, Mom would wind up dead. "You think I should have done more to protect Mom," Brendan says, and the guilt in his voice is almost thick enough to squeeze.

"I think we both should have." He chucks his brother on the shoulder. "And I also think you should go to bed now, if you're going to come to the gym and get your ass kicked when you spar with me tomorrow. Besides which, you have a wife to placate, flirty-drunk boy."

Brendan groans. "Oh, I'm not gonna hear the end of this one, am I?"

"Nope. 'Night."

_A/N: Please read and review – I'm not quite sure where this is going, and I'd love some reader input! _

_The World Health Organization's website has some startling statistics on violence against women. If you're interested in reading more, go to who dot int and search for "violence against women." _


	10. Lack-of-update apology plus promise!

Um... look. I apologize right now because I haven't updated.

I'm not writer's-block-aded or anything, I'm _writing._ I just happen to be writing, ahem, sex scenes for the FUTURE – both for my Hunger Games fanfic and my Warrior one – and I'm having a hard time bridging time here.

Just promising you that I'll be back with more installments soon. Probably an update will come faster for The Light in Your Eyes – we have Gale's letter to get through (AANNNGGST, babies, angst!), and a Haymitch chapter, and then another Katniss POV chapter, and then while the former District 12 Victors are traveling to the Capitol for the anniversary "festivities," we'll go back several months to pick up with everybody's favorite foulmouth, Johanna (and THAT much is written).

But my story arc for Long Road Home is coming together nicely now, with two babes-with-history for darling damaged noble Tommy to play white knight to... so look for an update within a couple of weeks for that one as well. Sadly, those (ahem) sex scenes are several chapters down the road, but I'm getting a handle on where in the puzzle they go, and I've got some bridgework to repair, getting from Here to There.

Encouragement would be awesome. Love you all.


	11. Chapter 11: Sunday Dinner, and Trust

**Chapter 11: Sunday Dinner, and Trust **

_**A/N: Okay, so I lied a little, and I apologize. First, I got this chapter ready before I updated my Hunger Games fic (sorry 'bout that, Gale's letter is surprisingly difficult to write but I WILL get to it soon). And second, um... I just finished laying out plot for41 more chapters of THIS thing, so I haven't exactly been idle. **_

_**I make no claim to own anything except my own characters.**_

Sunday lunch is vegetable soup and garlic bread for everyone except Tommy, who gets soup and baked cod and extra veggies. The bread smells good, and he sighs a little over passing it up, but usually he doesn't miss bread all that much. Bacon, now... he misses _bacon_. And cheeseburgers. A bacon cheeseburger and a beer, that would be his big diet-busting trifecta, and Frank would probably kill him and then make him do a million squat-thrusts an hour for three days in a row. Some ways, Frank's even stricter than Pop.

Usually Tess does a big Sunday lunch when they get back from Mass, but not today. Today, after her friend Kelly's boys return from their weekend with their dad, the big meal will be dinner. Should be good – Brendan's already put in a beef tenderloin to marinate, and he's going to grill it. Tess, practically vibrating from happiness, has gone all out with the good tablecloth and the extra leaf in the dining room table. Rosie has been singing, "Jack, Jack, Jack," intermittently up in her room with her dolls for the past hour, and Emily's doing cartwheels out on the front lawn.

And Tommy's unaccountably nervous. Maybe it's the stir and bustle all over the house. Pop never liked anybody coming over to visit, maybe it's that. Weird how old things just come up out of nowhere and make him cringe. Last week Emily had dropped her plate of spaghetti, trying to carry it to the table while Tess was busy getting the milk out of the fridge. The plate broke and the sauce went everywhere, and Emily cried, but it was Tommy who had suddenly become so agitated that he couldn't sit at the table anymore. He'd gone outside and climbed up into the girls' treehouse, trying to slow his breathing. Trying not to shake.

After awhile Brendan had come out to find him, climbing up to sit next to him in this small space meant for children, not for two grown men built like the two of them are, and he'd just sat there leaning his warm shoulder against Tommy's for awhile before saying, softly, "This house is not like the one we grew up in, Tom. Nobody gets smacked for dropping stuff."

"I know."

"Oh, you know? Tell your face, then."

"I been sittin' here telling myself that since I came outside, but I sometimes just don't believe it." Brendan hadn't answered, just pressed his shoulder closer. "I want to believe it. I just... don't. Sometimes."

"Give it time," Brendan had said, and then after a long pause, "Emily's sad because she thinks she upset you."

_No. _"Well, we can't have that." Tommy shoved at his brother's shoulder, but gently, to get him moving. "Gotta go fix that right now." And he'd gone straight up to Emily's room to hug her and tell her it was okay. Nothing to worry about, he's not mad at her, he's okay, really, just... just sometimes noise makes him think of bad things in the past, that's all.

"What bad things?" Emily wanted to know. Emily, whose Worst Thing Ever was having her baby sister in the hospital, and he doesn't want her knowing about the bad stuff first-hand.

"I don't want to tell you about them," he'd said. "Just – they were bad. And if anybody does anything bad to you, ever, you tell me, and I will _make it stop_. Got that?"

"Yes," she'd whispered, big-eyed, impressed by the intensity of his promise.

"Good. Because I will look after you," he'd said, realizing as he said it that it was absolutely true. And shortly thereafter, realizing that there is very little he's ever experienced like the feeling of a kid's trusting arms around his neck.

So maybe it's just that, the memory of how nasty Pop could be with other people visiting the house, that's giving him the willies now. In any case, he's so jumpy he just goes for another run, and then after a quick shower he lies down on the floor in his bedroom and puts his feet up against the wall, doing some weird breathing exercise Frank sometimes makes him do to relax. It sort of works, so that by the time he starts smelling grilling meat and hears the doorbell ring, he's feeling close to normal. There's just that slight tingle left, running underneath his skin, that super-alert sense that he had – they all had – come to depend on in Iraq, to warn of anything suspicious. Anything at all: the wind shifting, an unfamiliar noise, an unusual smell. Most of the time it was nothing. But sometimes it wasn't.

He doesn't want to think about it. Not now, when he can hear Emily exclaiming, "Jack! You're here!" and Rosie squealing like a penny whistle, when everything is so clearly fine. Not now. So he takes another deep breath and pushes down his uneasiness and goes out of his room into the kitchen.

While he's standing there, Tess and her friend come into the kitchen, talking a mile a minute, and a group of what looks like two dozen kids race through it on their way to the back yard. "Your kids still eat mac-and-cheese, right? We've got that, and a tenderloin Brendan's grilling, and huge mounds of steamed broccoli. Rolls. And brownies with strawberries for dessert."

"That sounds _so_ great," Tess' friend Kelly says, flipping a brown curl off her face. "Jack eats pretty much anything, and Martin will eat pretty much anything as long as he can cover it in ketchup first. Thank God for ketchup, or the kid would starve." She shakes her head. _Jack and Martin, that's two. Plus Em and Rosie, that's four. Not two dozen._ He turns and looks out the window to the deck, counting small wiggly bodies. Emily, Rosie, Jack and Martin, that adds up to four. _Four. Not two dozen_. The actual count matches the expected count. Nobody's hurt, nobody's missing. He's not crazy. He must still be jumpy, though God only knows why.

To take his mind off the possibility of being crazy and seeing four kids as a seething horde of little devils, he checks Kelly out, head to foot. She's too busy talking to Tess about some plan or other for lunch one day this week to have noticed him lurking at the back of the kitchen, so he can look without feeling like an asshole for staring.

She's shorter than he'd remembered, maybe five feet or just a hair over. Wearing a pale blue-green blouse and a white cardigan sweater over it, dark jeans, dark blue-green flat shoes. Hair down in a wavy cloud around her shoulders, not up in a ponytail the way it was the other night. And she's prettier than he'd remembered, too. Heart-shaped face with a little pointy chin, short straight nose. She's looking away so he can't see those eerie pale eyes head-on, but she's got such a pretty mouth, a delicate top lip with a deep bow in it and a very full bottom lip. Wide-ish shoulders for a girl, a narrow waist curving out to rounded hips – nobody is ever going to mistake _her_ for a man, even if they miss the nice rack. Even at a distance. The vee of her blouse goes down a little further than it ought to, or maybe it's just long on her short little torso, because he can see the beginning of her cleavage, just that little shadow there, and then he stops looking because it _is_ rude and Mom would already have smacked him on the back of the head for being ungentlemanly.

He moves into the kitchen and both women's heads swing toward him. "Hey, Tommy," Tess says cheerfully, pulling a big dish of macaroni and cheese out of the oven.

"Hi," Kelly says, and smiles. He'd forgotten, too, that she's got a dimple in her right cheek, and just like before, those pale eyes feel like lasers going over his skin, so he looks away before he answers.

"Hi. Tess, you want me to set the table?"

"Oh – if you want to, that's fine." She sounds surprised. "That'd be great, actually."

"I can do drinks if you remind me where you keep your glasses," Kelly says, and the three of them move around the kitchen in varying patterns, avoiding each other, and then he goes into the dining room to set the table. It looks pretty in here, and he decides to tell Tess it does.

Just as he comes back into the kitchen, so does Brendan, bearing a platter with a huge steaming hunk of beef, the smell of which immediately makes his mouth water. "Wow, that smells delicious," Kelly says, her eyes going big. "Tenderloin? You're spoiling me."

"Decided to spoil all of us," Brendan says, and smiles. "Tommy can eat this, it's relatively low-fat," and Kelly looks a little startled. "He's in training," Brendan explains. "He didn't tell you? Strict diet."

"Very strict," Tess adds. She points to Brendan. "Yeah, he was on something like it when Frank was training him. Mostly protein and vegetables. The occasional complex carb – weird stuff like quinoa. Or brown rice."

"I liked the rice," Brendan says, getting out a cutting board, then a meat fork and carving knife. "And I loved Beef Day – that's once every three weeks, only lean cuts. I got sick of broccoli, though."

"Can we please talk about something other than diet?" Tommy says, starting to feel edgy again, and it doesn't help that everybody's eyes are on him.

It's Tess who diverts the conversation almost immediately, asking Kelly how the boys are settling back into school in Philly, and he stops paying attention to the talk to concentrate on his breathing. Brendan, slicing tenderloin, catches his gaze and jerks his head over, meaning _Come talk to me_. Tommy doesn't want to talk, goddammit, he wants _out,_ but _out_ is full of kids – he can hear the shrieks and laughter through the screen door – and the house is full of people looking at him, and he's starting to feel trapped. But Brendan, getting a closer look at him, seems to get it that silence is the best Tommy can manage at the moment, because he says, "Hey. I think I left something for Kelly on the front seat of my car. Would you mind getting it for me?"

And that's just perfect, because the car's out front, and he can have a moment to himself, just to breathe, with nobody all up in his face. Brendan's car, as Tommy had expected, has been upgraded, but also as he'd expected, it's not flashy in the least. He's replaced the older-model black Corolla with a new silver-gray Camry. Very practical. Very Brendan. _He_ wouldn't bother with a Lexus or a Beemer, not with a house to pay for and people to support; he'd see that as a waste, of course.

Tommy lets himself think, just for a moment, about what he'd do with the same kind of big money, if he was able to win Sparta III. Just suppose. He would... well, first, he'd pay Brendan back for the half a mil that went to Pilar. And he'd send her some more – set up investments for Manny's kids, if she wouldn't take it for expenses and stuff. And then... he might like a truck, himself. Black. Not too big. What else?

Nothing comes to mind. What does he need, anyway? A place to live, nothing fancy. The truck would be nice, but he doesn't need it.

What he wants, really, is to be the best. That's what's driving him. That's all. That's enough. _Focus._ He gets a good deep breath, the first one in several minutes, and feels more like himself.

On the passenger seat of Brendan's car are two gift bags, one in bright colors and one silver. The silver one's heavy. He gets both the bags out, slams the door. On the way back in, he's letting the front door close quietly, and he hears Tess say, "Are you still having flashbacks?" He's instantly pissed off, it's _none of her fucking business_, and he's considering just dropping the damn gift bags on the floor and taking off, it's just too hard to be around people sometimes.

There's a pause, and then Brendan says, "I think her silence is answer enough, isn't it?"

_Oh._ Not talking about him at all.

Children who live in a violence-filled house learn to eavesdrop. _Is it safe to go into the kitchen, is Pop in a bad mood, does that pouring sound mean water so Mom can take more aspirin or does it mean whiskey into Pop's tumbler, is Mom crying upstairs?_ Sometimes you only learn the answers to these questions by sneaking around and listening. Silent listening is a skill which came in useful in combat situations, and it's a skill Tommy's never lost. Never will lose, probably.

Kelly's voice, when it comes, is quiet. "Not as often as I was. The counseling helped. The meds helped too, but I'm off them now. I still have episodes from time to time. There's not a common trigger. Just – well, maybe a couple of times a month, and they don't last long. It's not so bad."

Tess says, "I don't know why that embarrasses you. _Anybody_ would have trouble getting over what happened."

"I don't like not being in control of myself," Kelly says. "It's frightening."

"It's okay," Brendan says, and there's a soft rhythmic sound, as if he's maybe patting her on the shoulder. "I do get that. But listen, you don't have to hide stuff from us. Especially not me, because I've been through that. I know. Trust me. I just wish we'd known what was going on earlier, because I would have _put a stop_ to that shit."

Kelly's voice shakes a little now. "Thanks. I just – thanks."

Tess asks, "And Mike? Did you see him today?"

"He just let the boys out of the car and they came in the house. Didn't talk to him. I mean, that was a relief, but I meant to ask him about the child support check, and didn't get a chance to, so now I'm going to have to call him."

"Hang in there," Brendan advises.

"I'm okay," Kelly says. "Look, the meat's getting cold, let's call the kids in."

"I'll do it," Brendan says. "Stick it in the microwave for a minute or two, huh, Tess?" The deck door slams, and Tommy knows it's time to move. He opens the front door silently, closes it loudly, walks through the living room into the kitchen, carrying gift bags and setting them on the counter near the phone, where Tess puts her purse.

Kelly's eyes are pink-rimmed and she immediately busies herself with insisting that all the kids wash their hands, and then with putting food on plates. The meal is punctuated with child noise and bustle, and to avoid that turmoil in his head, Tommy concentrates on the food, which is fabulous – the meat's tender and flavorful (_God_, beef tastes so good), the broccoli's cooked perfectly and seasoned with pepper and a little parmesan cheese. Gradually, the kid noise gets louder and louder, and his calf muscles start tensing up, twitching, with the impulse to run.

Rosie is squealing with laughter, and how had he never known how much ear-piercing _noise_ little girls can make? You'd think little girls would at least be quieter than boys. But no. If anything, they're worse.

And Kelly's younger boy, whatzis name, Martin? Yeah, Martin – he's kicking the legs of his chair. Kelly's made him stop twice, the last time with a sharp snap of the fingers and a gimlet eye that makes Tommy think of one of his CO's, a guy known for being such a hardass that he could slice the buttons off your uniform with just one pissed-off glance. But Martin must either be dumb, or forgetful, or maybe just five years old, because he goes back to kicking the chair, and at this point his mother gets up from her chair, comes around to Martin's, and lifts him calmly out of it, saying briefly, "Come with me." She takes him around the corner, and they can hear her saying something to him, in a firm tone of voice that, despite being pitched considerably higher, has the _ignore-me-at-your-peril_ quality that every Marine sergeant Tommy's ever known has had command of. Martin walks back in in front of his mother, looking chastened (finally), and sits in his chair to begin eating (finally), although in Tommy's opinion he has absolutely ruined an excellent piece of meat by dousing it in ketchup.

His plate's finally empty, and Emily and Jack have started a clandestine battle with bread balls and spoons down at one end of the table, which Tess is now trying to stop, and Rosie's laughing harder, and it's just too much, he _has to move_. He's up, taking his plate to the sink, without a word to anyone because he just can't, that's all. He meets Brendan's eyes on his way past, through the screen door and up into the treehouse once again.

The treehouse might have been built for the girls, but it's the perfect place to go be by yourself. He remembers wishing and wishing for one when he was a kid, a place outside, away from the thud of fists and the crash of broken glass, away from the shouting. Benjy Williams had had a treehouse, one with a roof, and he only lived four houses down, so sometimes Tommy would sneak out the front door, taking his blanket with him, and go sleep in Benjy's haven of peace in the maple tree. Sometimes Brendan would come with him, if things were getting too bad downstairs. Benjy's treehouse was good because it had a roof to keep out the rain, and enough walls that you wouldn't roll off the edge in your sleep, and also because the one time Benjy's dad had come out with a flashlight to see who was in his backyard, he hadn't minded, had even offered them his couch. "No thank you, sir," Brendan had declined. "We gotta get home in awhile."

Something of that kind of peace lives in Emily and Rosie's treehouse, which has three solid walls and one open, made safe with a double railing where you can sit and dangle your legs if you like. He never does that. He prefers sitting with his back against the back wall. It feels safer.

It's a good while, maybe close to an hour, before anybody comes outside, and then it's the kids, let loose out into the yard with two kickballs, and the noise isn't so bad outside, it's just excitement. There's a clang, and he looks over to see Brendan taking the grates off the grill to clean it, and in a few moments he goes back in, and it's just the kids playing on the grass. You can see them very well from up here. Jack's a good three inches taller than Emily, who is not short for her age, and his blond hair still gleams even though the sun has already set and the air's full of shadows. His dad must be tall, Tommy thinks, and then is jolted by the mental picture of a tall guy twisting Kelly's arm up behind her back.

Kelly is so damn _little._ She's not slender; her general body shape is the kind he might call sturdy, or maybe _really curvy _ would be closer to the point, but she's little. What kind of chance had she ever had to escape a physical attack from a full-grown man? He shakes his head, thinking about it. Thinking about a little boy who just wanted to protect his mother.

It's only a few minutes later when the maple tree shakes underneath like somebody's climbing the ladder steps nailed into it, but he's sure it's Brendan coming to check on him again, so he's surprised when a dark head appears above the floor. She's surprised, too – she stops climbing, and those weird light eyes of hers go big, and she says, "Oh!" She shakes her head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bother you," and she starts back down the ladder. While he'd rather be alone, there's something in her voice that sounds afraid, and _that _pushes him to saying something he wouldn't usually say.

"No, it's okay. You can come up." After all, he's got nothing to be afraid of from her, little as she is. And he'll be damned if he behaves like a guy women should fear.

After a pause, during which her eyes study him and she apparently decides he's not an axe murderer, she comes up into the treehouse and sits down, dangling her legs over the edge. "It's a good place to watch the kids from," she says, a little defensively.

"Yeah. I been watchin' 'em." There's a pause in which he notices that she's sitting as far away from him as possible. "Your Jack, he looks like his dad, doesn't he? He's gonna be tall." She just nods, not looking at him. He shouldn't be pushing it, but he does anyway. "Martin looks more like you. Not so tall as Jack, maybe."

"Probably not," she says coolly, and it finally dawns on him that he might have been rude. Was definitely rude on Friday, not making sure she knew she was safe from him.

"Look," he says, "About the other night... I didn't mean to, to make you nervous. I'm sorry about that."

"Not your fault," she says. "I was kind of in a... a bad place and you just startled me, that's all."

"I know about flashbacks," he says, surprising himself, because he hasn't even talked about them to Brendan. "They sort of freeze you." He's had two since getting out of Leavenworth. Mostly he just gets jumpy and irritable, has moments when the urge to _be somewhere else_ is immediate, insistent, must be obeyed. That kind of behavior, he knows, makes him look like a total dick – but not a frightened one. And that's another thing about children of a violent house, they learn not to show fear if they can possibly manage it.

Look at Jack down there. Eight years old, and Brendan said the kid had balls big as his heart, both pretty large.

"Can we please – " she says, and then exhales through her nose.

"Talk about something else? Sure." He doesn't know why he feels like talking to her, when he can barely talk to his own brother. Or maybe that's the deal, she's not family. "So how'd you meet Tess, again? You used to live around here?"

"Oh, that." She sucks in a breath through her nose and then lets it out again. "Well, that was another instance of me being a wreck." She's quiet for a minute or two, and he just lets the silence ride until she starts talking. "Like you said, we used to live over a few blocks, and I was out walking with Jack and Martin in the stroller, and I was trying not to let them know I was crying – well, let _Jack _know, Martin was about two months old, they're kind of oblivious at that stage – and so I'm walking down one side of Maple Heights and on the other side coming toward me is this woman pushing a little girl in a stroller, and she's crying too, and just as I'm starting to pass her, something made me turn and cross the street. Didn't even look for cars, which was stupid, but there's hardly any traffic on this street in the middle of the morning. So I walk up to her and we both stop and we're both crying, and I say something like, 'I hope you're in better shape than I am,' and she says, 'Well, don't mind me, I'm just a little bit pregnant,' and of course all that was really shorthand for 'Hey, wanna be my friend?' and she invited me in for tea, and the rest... is history."

Women make no sense. "Oh."

"I missed out on a lot of the stuff that was going on around the time that Brendan was in that tournament thing," she says, thoughtfully. "Well, and you were in it too. Didn't see it, didn't know much about it at all. Still don't. I had my own problems right then, with the move and the divorce and all. But I still feel bad that I didn't know anything about how they were about to lose their house. I couldn't have done a thing about it, nobody has less pocket change than a single mom, but still. I could have done... I dunno... _something_. If only be a shoulder to cry on."

He nods.

"So you and Brendan really hadn't seen each other for all that time before the tournament?"

"Really." He doesn't elaborate. If she wants the details she can ask Tess.

"I guess it's been kind of an adjustment. Getting used to each other again."

"You could say that. Why were you crying?"

"What? Oh, when I met Tess?" He nods. He doesn't know her that well, but he's starting to pick up that when she leaves stuff out, it's because it's painful, and that feels familiar. She sighs. "Well, that..." She trails off and settles her chin on her arms, which are resting on the railing. "That was the second time I found out that Mike was having an affair."

He shakes his head. "Dickhead. What, was he _stupid _or something?" She turns her head slowly and shoots him the same sort of glare that she'd given Martin earlier to get him to stop kicking his chair. "I mean, what kind of guy does that?"

_Way to go, Conlon, let the lady know you've been checking out the goods. Way to be a gentleman. _He shakes his head at himself.

She turns her head back to the yard, where the kids are now doing somersaults and Emily is teaching Jack how to do a cartwheel. "_He_ said it was because I was unavailable. Sexually."

"You had just had a baby," he says. "Right?" She nods. "Well, then he was a dickhead."

"Probably," she says, as if she's tired of the whole subject.

They're quiet for awhile, and the kids wander off to the swingset. From the yelling, it appears that Martin is unhappy that Jack is pushing Rosie instead of him, and Jack tells him to wait his turn. Martin complains. Jack says, "Shut up, Martin, your turn later," and Tommy shakes his head, smiling a little.

"Sounds familiar," he says. "I was always buggin' the hell out of Bren when we were little."

She smiles too. "Jack's got more patience with girls than he does with his little brother. But then Martin's pretty mouthy, and you're not." She shoots him a sidelong glance. "Tess says you don't really talk." He shakes his head. "How come you're talking to me, then?"

"I dunno." He thinks over some of the things she didn't say the other night, and he might know why she feels safe to talk to. "Maybe 'cause your dad was as much of a fisty drunk as mine was, maybe."

"No," she says, very firmly. "Daddy never hit us. Well, he spanked us, but only if we did something really awful. Usually it was Mama and a smack on the hand."

He doesn't say anything; he's thinking back over their conversation the other night, and trying to remember where he got the impression. He turns sideways from where he's sitting, wanting to see what her face looks like. Right now she's looking out into the past, like it might be sitting in the oak tree on the other side of the yard.

"That's not to say that Daddy wasn't a real sonovabitch when he wanted to be. And it's not to say he didn't take a drink now and then. But he was sweet to Mama, and gentle at home." Her voice has gone soft on the consonants again the way it does when she talks about home, stretching out the vowels, all twang and lilt, speeding up and then slowing down over a word or two and then speeding up again. "Well, he _did_ take an axe to this guy who was botherin' Mama out in the front yard once."

"An _axe? _Jesus."

"Well, this guy was drunk and he thought Mama was her sister Loretta, and he kept howling for Loretta at the gate one Saturday night in February. It wasn't all that late, _I _was still up and I was probably only about eight years old. He'd been out there almost an hour yelling, and even Mama came out on the porch to tell him that she was Josie, not Loretta, but he wouldn't go away. So she called the sheriff's office, but the deputies were all busy arresting people for fightin' in the parking lot of the bar downtown, and they couldn't come up to our house. Daddy finally got just about sick to death of it, so he grabbed the firewood axe and he went out to run him off. Noah and I could hear him from upstairs, and I went and sneaked into Noah's room so I could see out the window. I could hear him telling that guy to get off our property, because Loretta didn't live there, and if he didn't quit botherin' Josie, Daddy would make him stop. Well, turned out the man had a hunting knife with him, and he took a couple of swings at Daddy with it, and then Daddy warned him one more time. The man didn't leave, and he wouldn't get his hands off our fence, so Daddy swung the axe and wound up chopping off three of his fingers."

"_Christ_." Tommy shakes his head, imagining.

Kelly's giggling just a little bit. "I shouldn't laugh, it's not really funny. So then the guy finally ran off, so Daddy picked up the fingers and went and put them on ice, and _then_ he called the sheriff to come pick up the screaming drunk with a bleeding hand and take him to the hospital. They did get two of his fingers back on."

"Did your dad get arrested?" If you did that in Philly, you would be. If they could catch you, that is.

"No, the sheriff considered it was self-defense. But everybody knew not to mess with J.T. Doherty after that. He used to tell us: _Never mess with a Marine_." She shakes her head, looking embarrassed. "And good Lord, listen at me, my accent has kicked all the way back into the holler. Sorry about that."

"J.T.?"

"John Tipton. But everybody called him J.T."

He looks over the railing at the kids, kicking balls around the yard now. "Jack's named after him." It's not really a question, he'd make book on it. She nods. "Sounds like J.T. Doherty would have kicked the _shit_ out of anybody who laid a finger on his baby girl."

She pulls in a long breath and then lets it out just as slowly. Doesn't say anything, still staring out into the oak on the other side of the slowly darkening yard. The kids are still kicking balls around, in some pattern that only makes sense to them.

Tommy thinks about Mom's father, who died when she was just a baby, leaving her and Aunt Lucy and Gramma alone. Would he have kicked the shit out of his daughter's fisty husband, or would he have told Paddy that women all needed to be shown who's boss?

Maybe it was the wrong thing to have said to Kelly. He's about to say sorry for that when she starts talking again, and she's got her accent back under control, just a little softness in the consonants still. "You know, it's funny. I miss my daddy so much, I miss him every day, and even though he's been gone twenty years? I still feel like a little girl sometimes, and I just want my daddy to hug me. But I see your brother being daddy to his little girls, and something about seeing it just... heals my heart a little bit."

"Bren reminds you of your dad?"

"Little bit. You do, too. Not that either one of you look even the slightest bit like him, though. With you, it's more the expression on your face – stubborn as hell." It makes him laugh. Stubborn as hell, yeah. "And sweet underneath."

He stops laughing and throws her a glare. "What makes you say that?"

"Oh, don't get huffy. Look, I saw you with Emily and Rosie the other night, and they were very comfortable around you, 'Uncle Tommy' this and hugging your leg that. They trust you. They are _not one scrap_ scared of you."

"Oh, they're not scared of anything," he says, fighting down a warm little glow that's sprung up in his chest, "they're tough girls."

"They are," she agrees. "But you've been living in the same house for awhile, and you have been through a lot of shit, and sooner or later stress gets to you." He's about to protest when she adds, "I'm not blind, you know. You get jumpy around people and leave the room for no obvious reason, and Tess says you _don't talk_. And still those little girls trust you. So... I do too."

The yard's really starting to get dark now, and the back deck light comes on about the time that one of the kids trips over something and falls, and there's a wail of pain. Kelly's out of the treehouse like a shot, calling out, "Hey, I'm coming!" and Tommy follows her, jumping down the last steps to land beside where she's already gathering up a weeping Martin. "Hey hey," she says. "Let me see."

Martin points with a grubby finger to his knee, which is sporting a fresh graze but no blood. "I _fell_," he says accusingly, between sobs. "Jack didn't catch me."

"He can't always catch you, honey," Kelly says. "Well, you got a scrape, alright. Is it _that _bad? Do we have to go to the hospital for _stitches_?" She's gently teasing him, and Martin sniffs a little, shaking his head and then laying it on his mother's shoulder.

"Kiss it," he says, and sniffs again instead of wailing.

"Okay. Let me clean it up and then I'll give it a good kiss." She's already started to walk toward the house with him.

"No, _now._"

So she stops walking, lifts up his leg and kisses near the scrape. "You're tired," she says, tenderly. "Come on, lovey, let's get you bandaged up and we'll go home. It's close to bedtime. We've stayed a little too late. Kids, let's go in," she says to the other three, and they head in.

Tommy stays outside for a few minutes more, gathering up toys and putting them away, feeling the night breeze stir. Letting the bustle inside the house subside. When the light goes on in the upstairs bathroom for the girls' bath, he thinks about going in. But it's cool outside, cool enough to balance that little warm spot in his chest, so he stays out a little while longer.


	12. Chapter 12: Sexy Tattooed Bad Boys

**Chapter 12: Sexy Tattooed Bad Boys**

"I can't believe he was actually talking to you. He barely says two sentences at a time, and that only to Brendan. You know, when they're watching baseball or something. I might get about five words a day, if I'm lucky, and at least two of them are going to be 'thank you'."

"Really?" Kelly pops open her diet soda can. She and Tess are having lunch on the picnic bench at the tiny park near the doctor's office where Kelly works. It's a beautiful early spring day, if windy, and the blooming cherry trees look like popcorn lace against the sky. "Well, at least he _says_ 'thank you.'"

"I don't think he talks to such inferior beings as girls. I had some friends over for tea after yoga last week, and you'd have thought I'd imported a pack of feral warthogs into the house, by the appalled look on his face. He could _not_ get out of the kitchen fast enough."

Kelly laughs. "I don't know, I'd probably dodge a pack of yoganistas myself. Scary." She widens her eyes and waggles her fingers, pretend-scared for two seconds. "I think he's nice."

"Nice? He was _nice_ to you? That's so..."

"What, he's not nice to you?"

"Well, he's not _mean_ to me. If he was mean, Brendan would've kicked his ass already." Tess pulls the lid off her bowl of salad and adds the cottage cheese. "But like I say, he barely says anything to me at all, and as far as I'm concerned he's only got two good qualities – he's kind of a neat freak, so he does all sorts of things around the house to clean up, and he is very sweet with the girls. I mean, he's extremely sweet with them, and it is hard to fake 'sweet' with kids past half an hour."

"That's true. And the neatness thing is probably ten years' worth of military. My dad was the same way. Three books and a pair of shoes on the floor of my room would make him completely flip out and insist I go 'police up the area.' God _forbid _I leave a cereal bowl in the sink." Kelly finishes the first half of her turkey-and-romaine-on-wheat sandwich and opens the cherry Greek yogurt, digging for her spoon in her lunch bag.

"I guess we have different ideas of 'nice,' maybe. I'd call him something like 'sullen,' or 'prone to grunting,' myself." Tess rolls her eyes and takes a swig from her water bottle. "I think he still secretly hates me, at least a little bit. From when we were all teenagers, and he took off with their mom, and Brendan stayed with their dad? I think he blames _me_. I think he was jealous of me for stealing Brendan away. Which sounds kind of dumb, but there are all kinds of feelings bound up with that whole leave-your-alcoholic-dad deal. I mean, sometimes Brendan still has nightmares about his dad. It cannot have been easy for anybody." She sighs. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bring the whole thing up."

Kelly has a faraway look on her face, but she shakes off Tess's concern. "No, it's okay. You know I won't gossip about it or anything."

"I know."

"I think he's really hurting," Kelly says, digging her spoon into the yogurt again.

Tess blinks. "Who, _Tommy?_"

"Duh. It's right behind his eyes if you look. No wonder your feral yoga warthogs frightened him off."

Tess has not been looking at Tommy's eyes. She watches for tension in his arms instead, in case she needs to whisk the girls out of harm's way. So far it hasn't been necessary; when he gets tense he just leaves the room. Which, come to think of it, he does a lot. "Well, anyway...you want to go get our nails done at the mall or something? I mean, sometime. Go do some girly stuff together? I never get to do girly stuff with, you know, a girlfriend. I can do pink glitter nails all day long at the house because that's what Emily likes, but still."

"Yeah, let's. Well, not nails, I'd have chips in two days. Pretty nails and nursing don't really mix. But something girly, yeah. Perfume shopping or something."

"You and your perfume obsession," Tess says and shakes her head.

"I'm actually thinking of getting another tattoo," Kelly says.

"What?!" Tess is shocked. "What do you mean, 'another' tattoo? I didn't know you already had one. You told me you'd never get one!"

Kelly shrugs. Smiles. "Looks like I was wrong about that. _God_, this yogurt is really good."

"Forget the yogurt! Okay, now, you're gonna have to _show_ me this tattoo."

"What, here?" Kelly manages not to laugh out loud, but she's fighting it hard. "I don't know that this is the appropriate place..."

"Where _is _it?"

"Right shoulder blade. I'd have to take off my shirt to show you."

Tess is shaking her head again. "And you made fun of _my _tattoo!"

"That's because yours is stupid. C'mon, _Taurus? _Dumb."

"Is not. So what's yours, then, Miz My-Tattoo-Is-Not-Stupid?"

Kelly gets off the bench, turns her back to Tess, and pulls her scrubs top partway up. Tess can see her coral-pink bra, but also the cursive word inked across the shoulder blade, _**Stronger.**_"Nice," she says, surprised. "You're right, it _is _way cooler than mine."

"Absolutely." Kelly pulls her shirt back down. "I didn't traumatize anybody, did I?"

"No, nobody saw." She leans over to hug Kelly. "I like it. Very much. Better not show Brendan, he'll want me to get one, and I'm not doing that again. It _hurt._"

Kelly sits back down and sips her diet root beer. "O-ho, _he_ wanted you to get a tattoo?"

"Well, he got that one on his shoulder, and then he sort of wanted us to, you know, match. I thought it was kinda cheesy. You know, like, 'I am a bad mofo dude, I can mess you _up_.' I think he just wanted to do it so he'd look tough for UFC. And I didn't want him to be doing that anyway. The possibility that he'd wind up injured for life was driving me stone _crazy_. Gah. So the tattoo was sort of a last straw."

"Oh, I dunno, I think it looks pretty tough. He's got that craggy sort of Irish face, you know," Kelly says, tilting her head to one side to consider, "but sweet eyes, and I suppose the last thing you want to look like in a fight is sweet."

"_Hey_. Hands off my man, _bitch_." And the girls cackle together like a couple of Halloween witches, both of them knowing the last thing Brendan would ever do would be to leave Tess, and the last thing Kelly would ever do would be to try to take him.

"So, anyway. You got that stupid Taurus symbol to make him happy?"

"Yeah. And a – um, never mind."

"What, a heart on your hipbone?" Kelly jokes, but Tess blushes, and then they crack up all over again. "_God_, the things you will do for that man. I don't even wanna ask what your sex life is like. No, seriously, I like tattoos. Unless they're on somebody's face or neck, then that's just gross."

"Really? I never figured you for a tattoo fan. I can't imagine why we never talked about this before," Tess muses.

"We had other stuff to talk about. You know, like our offspring driving us nuts. Not to mention our husbands."

"Uh-huh. Listen... did you get that child support check from Mike?"

Kelly shakes her head. "I have to call him. I don't want to, but I sort of need the money."

Tess used to like Mike Porter. He looks sort of like Rick Rossovich in his best days, tall with lean muscles and a long humorous face, quite good-looking. Jack has inherited his thick dark-blond hair, and Jack's eyes are the same deep blue as his dad's, but his face is rounder, and he has Kelly's winged eyebrows. Martin won't be as tall, Tess thinks, and he's going to have Mike's angular cheekbones and nose as well as the straight brows, but his coloring is more like Kelly's, with darker hair and paler eyes, and Kelly's freckles. They two look like brothers, but not like twins. It's funny, she often thinks, how her own daughters look related but not the same; Emily's hair is darker and straight, while Rosie somehow picked up those gorgeous golden ringlets from somewhere. Tess finds it endlessly fascinating to look from one small face to the other, finding similarities and differences.

Mike had always been somewhat possessive of Kelly, Tess can remember, but he'd been generally cheerful, the kind of guy you find being charming and off-handedly friendly to all the women in a mixed group, and being the life of the men's gatherings in the corners, where the guys would be drinking beers and telling off-color jokes. But let Kelly have three minutes' conversation with a man, and Mike would find a way over to her, put his arm around her shoulders, and pull her away. "She's my wife, man. Need a few minutes in private." And Kelly would emerge from those "few minutes in private" pale and uncommunicative, and they'd leave soon after.

"Jerk," Kelly says. "I don't want to talk about him. Which means, of course, that I will probably complain about him a lot, and then later insist that I don't actually do that." She makes a face. "I just have to be so, so careful with the boys around. He's their dad. I can't be talking all bad about him."

"Do they remember the fight?" Tess means the one that had finally pushed Kelly to get out, after months of telling her friends that it wasn't that bad, really, just "a bruise here and there where he didn't realize he'd been holding her wrist so hard." Just a "smack on the cheek when he was feeling really down and she'd made him angry." In that last fight, Mike had broken her arm, bruised her ribs, and shoved Jack out of the way so that he'd hit his head on the coffee table. The sudden escalation of violence and the involvement of her kid had been her wake-up call.

"Not Martin. But Jack does. He was five, of course he remembers. And the only reason I didn't contest the new custody arrangement is that Mike's been to counseling. If there's any sign at all, if the boys even mention so much as a scratch, you better bet I'll go screaming all the way back to court whether I have the money for a lawyer or not. This is a one-strike-you're-out situation." Tess can see how determined Kelly is.

She remembers Brendan's face the time they'd been visiting his father, before Rosie was born, and Mr. Conlon had been into the whiskey. He'd screamed into Tess's face and shoved Brendan, which had terrified poor Emily, and almost as frightening as the change in Mr. Conlon had been the one in her husband. Brendan had wordlessly herded them out to the car, put them in it, went back inside and stayed there for three minutes before coming out looking as implacable as grim death. Every advance made by Mr. Conlon since then had been met with stony refusal, and it was only Tommy's desperate need of his family before his court-martial that had even gotten father and older son talking again. There haven't been any relapses as far as Tess knows, and although they still don't invite Brendan's father for visits, they've been to see him at his house twice in the past year, staying only a few hours each time. It's a start, at least. And Paddy's consistently been making his AA meetings, consistently making overtures from a distance.

_Thank God Kelly had been so concerned about her sons,_ Tess thinks, or she'd never have gotten out at all. She'd have let Mike turn up the heat and keep turning it up, until she was dead, like the frogs in the science lab who don't notice the gradual increase in temperature of the water in their pot.

"Explain something to me, will ya?" Kelly says suddenly, and Tess knows this is important, because her childhood mountain Virginia accent has suddenly kicked in the way it does when Kelly's emotional for some reason. "You know, my mama always said for me to leave the sexy tattooed bad boys alone, they were trouble and they were never gonna be anything _but_ trouble. And so I listened to her, and I was good, and I dated Boy Scouts, and I kept it zipped _up_ until I married my very own Captain America, who, as it turns out, is actually Psycho Fist Boy. Now, can you explain that? Cause it _sure_ don't make any sense to me."

"I guess it just means you don't really know people until you live with – wait. Wait one minute." And Tess shakes her head, as if she's getting water out of her ears. "Did you just say 'sexy tattooed _bad boys_'?"

Kelly's eyes get big. "Uh-oh. Tactical error. I didn't mean that."

"'Sexy tattooed bad boys.' You said that. I heard you."

"No, I didn't mean it the way it came out – "

This is getting good. "You better keep your greedy eyes off my husband, and he had _better_ not leave me for your sexy tattoo." Tess knows good and well it's not Brendan's tattoos that Kelly had her eyes on, but it's too much fun not to tease her.

"Yeah, he'd better not. Because we'd _both_ kill him."

Kelly's emphatic, and Tess has to laugh. Still: yeah, okay, her brother-in-law is sporting some very fine muscle development, but he's not in the least what Tess would call dateable. Especially for somebody like her friend, who's been through Violent Husband Hell. "No, but really, 'sexy'? Are you serious?"

"Are you blind?" Kelly shoots right back. "The man lives_ in your house_."

"And like I keep telling you, does not talk to me," Tess explains. "Gets up every day at 5 am to run. Notices and picks up a piece of paper and four Cheerios that missed the trash can, accurately measures out three cups of salad and ten ounces of baked fish without bothering with a measuring cup or a scale, folds laundry and cleans bathrooms with military precision. Turns down brownies without a peep but will sneak strawberries out of the fridge and mutter, 'sorry' if asked about it later without realizing that he's the one I buy them for... but _doesn't talk_."

"Does too. I distinctly heard him ask you if you wanted him to set the table the other night." Kelly finishes the yogurt and starts on her second sandwich half.

"Well, that was probably the first thing, beyond 'hi,' 'thanks,' and 'good night,' he'd said to me in a week. I'm telling you, I'm completely freaked that he talks to you. It's like the sun coming up in the west."

Kelly shrugs. "Well, I'm telling _you_, he's _nice_. Maybe not... you know... lace-curtains, tea-and-cookies-nice, but sort of sweet." Tess makes a face. "Do you remember him at all from before he and his mom left? From high school?"

"Some. I mean, I was kind of busy with my own teenage life, you know." Kelly snorts and rolls her eyes, and Tess tries to remember. "He was a lot skinnier than he is now. And he hadn't really grown into his permanent teeth yet, so he was kind of goofy-looking. I mean, Brendan was the cute one. But everybody knew who Tommy was because of the wrestling championship, and he had a lot of friends."

"That would be hard," Kelly says, "to go from a place where people are proud of you to a place where nobody knows you at all. Especially away from family. I had a hard enough time moving from Norton to Wilkes-Barre, and I had my brother. And the kids in the neighborhood were friendly."

Tess, who has not really thought much about this angle, nods. What _she_ thinks of when she thinks of that time is Brendan, of course.

She's silent for a moment, and then she tells Kelly what it was like from point of view of the one left behind. How bad things had immediately gotten for Brendan at home, because his dad was pretty much drinking nonstop, and sleeping at home had led to bruises. Along with that, no one was taking care of the grocery shopping, or the cooking, or the cleaning, and Tess' own mother had had to teach Brendan how to do laundry. He'd taken to spending a few nights a week at friends' houses, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag and showering before the school day began in the locker room. How tired he'd been, how worn out with worry and nerves and grief, and his grades had immediately taken a nosedive, to the point that the guidance counselor had to warn him that he might be doing himself out of a college scholarship – which, indeed, he had. Sometimes when he was studying at her dining room table, he'd fall asleep, and once had even_ cried_ in his sleep, not waking up even when she stroked his hair and whispered, "It's all right, baby, it's all right. It's all right."

And she tells Kelly how it had affected herself: how the night before Tommy and Mrs. Conlon left, she'd told Brendan that she thought she might be pregnant. They'd only done it twice, and they'd been careful, but not _that _careful, and she'd really thought they might have made a baby together. It had been terrifying. As it turned out, her period had only been five days late, nothing wrong at all. But she was sixteen. Brendan was almost seventeen. They couldn't have been good parents then.

But poor Brendan had been so torn. "I couldn't have left you, I couldn't," he kept saying. "They'll be okay. Tommy's smart. He'll take care of Mom. They'll be okay." And he'd watched the mail like a hawk, come his birthday week, come Christmas, only to find no envelope with his mother's handwriting on it. Eleven years, nothing. Nothing.

And then a letter from his father in the mail, a long legal envelope which had contained merely the results of the PI's investigation: Mary Rose Riordan, who hadn't used her married name once she'd left Pittsburgh, was dead. Had been dead since 1998, of lung cancer. Was buried in Tacoma. And Thomas R. Conlon had enlisted in the Marines shortly after his mother's death.

Brendan had said very little. She'd seen him tamp down his anger and sadness and confusion. But when they'd gone to bed that night, he'd held Tess so close despite her growing second pregnancy. "You're enough," he'd whispered to her. "You and Emily and this little one, you're all I want." She'd made love to him then, feeling the baby between them, kissing the tears out of his eyes.

Tess doesn't tell Kelly that part. Just that he'd been so wrecked by the knowledge that he hadn't helped – that Tommy hadn't let him help, hadn't trusted him to help.

"Guilt on both sides," Kelly says. "God, they both must have felt horrible."

"Did you see the fight?" Tess asks. "I know you were kind of crazy at the time, what with the divorce stuff. But did you see it?"

Kelly shakes her head. "No. And listen, I love your husband to death, sweetie, but I'm just not down with this whole fight thing. I don't even want to go watch it four by six inches big on Youtube on my laptop. Nuh-uh, I do _not_. I'm sorry."

"Fine," Tess says. "I just thought, you know... it was so emotional. I mean, they spent close to fifteen minutes really trying to freakin' _kill_ each other, I swear. After he dislocated Tommy's shoulder, Brendan was just trying to get Tommy to stop, telling him they didn't have to do this, it was over, it was time to give in. And Tommy _would not_ do it. Frank's over in the corner screaming, "Finish him!" and Tommy's all hung up on the cage at the end of the fourth round saying, "Come on," and I can tell this is tearing Brendan up, having to keep hitting Tommy. So in the fifth – "

"Tess, please," Kelly says, and her hands are shaking. "Please, I don't want to hear any more. I can't."

Tess takes a deep breath. She's underestimated how bothered Kelly is by the thought of violence. "Okay. Okay, I just... I promise, no more descriptions of hitting, but let me finish, because it was the weirdest thing ever, it was like a psycho sort of miracle, because at the end there, Brendan just kept telling Tommy he was sorry, it was okay to tap out, he was sorry, and he loved him." She stops to see how Kelly's doing now.

Kelly, who Tess_ knows for sure_ is a complete sucker for sad love stories, has gone all pleading-orphan-on-black-velvet, big eyes with tears in them, and she sighs. "And?"

"And Tommy tapped out. On Brendan's shoulder. I think they were both crying. There I was, all thrilled to little pieces that he'd won, that he wasn't dead or maimed or permanently injured, and that we'd get to keep our house – and it took me quite a while to realize that, in Brendan's mind, he'd won because he'd gotten his brother back."

Kelly wipes her eyes. "Guys are so strange. Do you think it was one of those things where they had to express all that anger physically before they could get past it and down to where the other stuff was? The good stuff, I mean: the part about missing each other and the guilt and the love. I have boys, you know. They fight. _Jack_ fights."

"Gentle Jack?" Tess is surprised.

"He doesn't often get to that point, but if he's provoked long enough he will. A lot of the time, Martin just wants his attention, so he picks at him until Jack's really mad. And afterward, it's like the storm has passed and we've got sunshine."

"Huh," Tess says. Maybe it's not as weird as she'd thought. But maybe it's still a miracle.


	13. Chapter 13: Steve's Girls, & a Rear View

**Ch. 13: Steve's Girls, and a Rear View**

**I make no claim to own any of the intellectual property associated with the movie or script.**

Frank's Soul of a Lion gym could not be more different from another building twenty-three blocks away, meant for the same purpose but completely unlike in appearance. Frank's gym is full of natural light from many windows, including a skylight, and the walls are pale, and there are inspirational posters all over them. The mats and other equipment are relatively new, and clean, and you have your choice of heavy bags – from Muay Thai foam-and-water to old-school leather boxing. The place smells of disinfectant and window cleaner and fresh masculine sweat, plus AXE deodorant and Icy-Hot.

Over at Russo's Gym on 14th St. downtown, the walls are concrete and so is the floor. The windows are small and located at the top of the 15-foot-high walls, and what light there is comes mostly from outdated hanging fluorescent fixtures, half of which need new bulbs. If the interior was ever painted, nobody can remember when. The bags are all old leather, some of them patched, and the mats are flaking foam, and the smell could best be described as Old School Locker Room: old sweat, new sweat, and dirt.

But Russo's is home to two trainers, instead of the sole Jedi Master/Sun Tzu genius of Frank Campana. Joey Russo is dead, but his son-in-law Lou Palotta – fifty-eight years old, running to fat – is an old-school boxer who nevertheless keeps in touch with the up-and-coming boys in the business. He's never trained a really successful fighter, but he's a good guy, and he knows people. If he can do you a favor, make a connection for you, he will.

Steve Lavery is an retired fighter who gave up the cage years ago, an also-ran who never managed to fulfill his early promise as either a boxer or an MMA fighter. Steve was always a step behind, too slow, not explosive enough with his punches – but his technique is solid. The other thing he's good at is talking to women, not to get laid, but to explain. To encourage, to challenge, to praise. Steve, the brother of three girls and the father of two, knows that women respond differently than men do. Tone of voice matters to them. They need confidence along with knowledge.

Steve's training six women right now, none of them good enough to take it professional at the moment, but then none of them have been at it very long, either. Alexa's nearly too old to go pro, Marisa needs some more muscle, Becka can't concentrate when there are men watching her, Clarice is a former softball standout who's coming along nicely, and Katlyn has no idea what she's doing but loves it anyway.

And then there's Jen. Steve knows Jen is The One: Jen Peretti _is_ Neo "There Is No Spoon" Anderson from those Matrix movies, nothing but potential. She's been with his program for eight months now, and she's still got a lot to learn, but she has an enormous fighting spirit and very good technique. Steve suspects that she's got some hard years behind her even though she's only twenty-five; she's mentioned foster care, and in such a way that immediately raised his hackles on her behalf. Probably made her tougher, though. She might be ready for small-time fights soon – maybe by this fall.

Right now it's noon and Jen's been at the speed bag for about 20 minutes. Later he'll set her to some footwork exercises and then weights, and in the afternoon some heavy-bag drills. Steve, who's married and happy, doesn't spend time fantasizing about his training clients, but every now and then he takes a minute to simply appreciate the physical beauty of a well-formed female athlete.

Take Jen, for example: she's wearing a dark blue sports bra and gray shorts today, and her back muscles are delineated under a thin later of sweat, smoothly moving as she pummels the bag. Her biceps are pretty cut, for a girl, and so are her abs. Her legs are slender but muscled, and she looks like a walking dangerous weapon.

Jen's got a wicked jab-cross combo, and she's even better on the mat. She can squirm out of holds like an eel, and she kicks with a lot of power and balance. If she ever does make it big as a fighter, which she deserves to, she'll have lots of fans, because she's pretty as well. Crisply waving black hair, dark olive skin, a pair of big, deep brown eyes with eyelashes so thick they look like the false ones you stick on, and even with the muscles and low body fat, she still has breasts. Despite the Italian last name, she could be a mix of any number of ethnicities. Steve thinks you take the Italian for granted – it's definitely there in the Mediterranean nose, with its slight hump. But there's something Asian in the shape of her eyes, maybe, too. Doesn't matter really, the overall effect is very attractive.

Jen finishes her drill on the speed bag, and then comes over to Steve to run through some footwork exercises combined with shadowboxing, and after that he's ready for some lunch. "Go eat, and then put your feet up for fifteen minutes while you digest." he tells her. He's just had an idea that may help advance Jen's career, and he goes in to Lou's office to talk to him over their sandwiches.

O : O : O :

Exhausted after a full day's workout, and starving on top of it, Jen Peretti strips down in the small locker room Russo's has designated for female use. Because of the room's configuration, the original locker room had an L-bend in it, and when Steve Lavery started training women, Lou blocked off the short side of the L and added a door from the main room, so that "Steve's girls," as Lou calls them, can change in peace. Even though there was no room for showers and the women have to make do with one sink and one toilet, Jen appreciates the trouble taken. Kindness from men has been rare in her life. She puts on fresh underwear, jeans, and her boots, and slips a Phillies tee over her sports bra, stuffing her sweaty workout clothes into a backpack and grabbing her helmet.

"See ya, Steve," she calls, and heads out the front door. She's the last of "Steve's girls" to leave because she works nights tending bar at The Palomino, a Western-themed club that has live music and great beer on tap, and so since her shifts end at about 2:30 am, she comes in later than the rest of the full-time girls in training. It's bartending, not "hostessing" or waiting tables or anything that could get her groped, and it sure as hell pays better than those jobs. It doesn't pay nearly as well as stripping at Tailfeathers used to, but at least she can keep her clothes and her self-respect on when she's pulling beers, or pouring shooters and margaritas, in jeans and a tank top. The tight top might show off a little of her cleavage, but it also shows off her biceps to those who might otherwise get grabby. When she covers up more, she doesn't make as much in tips, and she's willing to bare her shoulders for a few extra bucks, but at least her panties can stay on.

Standing over her bike, she puts on her knee pads, gloves, mesh jacket and helmet. Hops onto the motorcycle, kickstarts it, and zips off to do some grocery shopping before dinner and work. Forty minutes later, she's home with skim milk and eggs, salmon and chicken breasts, and every vegetable in the known world. One of the things she has struggled with is eating healthy, when she'd really rather just go eat out – chicken wings and pizza, or she's partial to the cheeseburgers at Star City Grille. And finally, when Steve got sick at yelling at her about it, he finally gave her permission to eat whatever she wanted at one meal a week: she could have that Star City cheeseburger, or up to four slices of pizza, as long as every single other meal or snack she had during the week was according to her diet. Usually she chooses Sunday lunch to cheat on, as that's a slow training day as well. As time's gone on, she's been looking forward to the "cheat meal" less and less. Some weeks she can hardly wait for Firehouse Wings and celery sticks, but some weeks she decides a cheesesteak with whiz and peppers would be more trouble than it's worth. It's a trade-off.

Once home and the groceries put away, she cuts broccoli into florets and carrots into sticks, and slices a quarter of a Vidalia onion. Then she puts all this plus two pieces of the salmon into a bowl with teriyaki sauce and lets it marinate in the fridge while she takes her shower. Under the hot water, lathering up with the vanilla orchid shower gel she's sort of addicted to, she thinks about Rob. "Handsome Rob," she'd called him, after the Jason Statham character in "The Italian Job," though Rob had more hair than Statham. But he had been similarly rugged, cold-eyed, and hard-bodied, a real fantasy of a tough guy. What a mistake. He'd turned out to be more interested in her blow jobs and free meals in her apartment than in her heart, and she'd kicked him out a few weeks earlier.

_Next one will be better_, she thinks. _I'll use better judgment. He'll be a guy with a real job, not just a part-time motorcycle repair guy._

So what would be a "real" job? To be honest, it really wouldn't matter that much – her criteria for "real job" would be: full-time, kept for at least six months, steady and legal. Even two part-time jobs would be okay, as long as the guy is a diligent worker and doesn't expect to mooch off her. Delivery person, beer salesman, CNA, chef, sanitation worker, _full_-time motorcycle repairman... any of those would be fine. As long as the guy pays his own way.

And as long as he treats her right, that 's the other thing she's recently started insisting on. No drunks, no meth-heads, no video-game junkies, no married men, no engaged men, no SM creeps who think women secretly _want _that Fifty Shades of Grey crap. (Well, maybe some of them do, who is she to judge? Still, Jen doesn't want that. She's been jerked around enough in her life.)

She does miss the sex – if Rob were still here, she could have some before she heads off to work. But the last straw had been his asking whether her friend Amber might be interested in coming over for drinks, the implication being that they could get her drunk and convince her to join in a threesome. She doesn't need that shit from a boyfriend. Amber's a friend, and just because she takes her clothes off for a living doesn't mean she sleeps around.

Jen dresses in a purple tank with a scoopneck and her favorite snug jeans, plus big silver-and-CZ hoops and her silver bangle bracelet. Does her eyes smoky because it makes her look interesting, and therefore very tippable.

While she's cooking, she calls and leaves a message on Amber's cell about going to see that Star Trek movie over the weekend. Amber just started her shift at Tailfeathers, so it'll be awhile before she gets a break to check her messages.

Dinner is good – broiled salmon, with stir-fried veggies and a small helping of brown rice, plus a few slices of canned pineapple. She'd love to be able to afford the fresh, but she has to economize where she can. Nevertheless, canned pineapple is delicious, and it sure as hell beats the food in that house where the only fruits and vegetables she ever ate that year were at school. She might have been thirteen that year; she can't remember... no, she'd been twelve. It was the year before she'd gotten her first period.

She can only barely remember Nonna's house, anyway, and they'd taken her away screaming from there when she'd been seven.

Food eaten, she collects her laundry and sorts it. Not enough to start a full load of anything, which is good; she doesn't really have time today. She balances her checkbook, then puts her boots on. Thank God they're comfortable enough to wear for hours on her feet. Normally she works eight-hour shifts, from 6:30pm to 2:30am, but on Fridays and Saturdays she splits a shift with Annie, taking the late half on Friday and the early half on Saturday.

Work's busy, but the live band is pretty good, and people seem to be feeling pretty good too, so it's a decent night. Cheerful people tip well, and Jen _hates _it that she's been so mercenary lately, but she needs the cash. Her apartment might be in a sucky part of town, and reasonably priced because it's basically divided former warehouse space, no separate rooms other than the bathroom, but it's all hers. And she still has to pay for it. And for gym fees, and gas for the cycle, and groceries and insurance... ah, well, modern life. Seems like every month she dips into the savings – not much, maybe $5-10, but that will drain the account over time.

But it is a good night, and she's happy with her take-home when she parks her bike outside the building and walks up. Unlocks the door, cleans her face, pounds a big stadium cup full of water because she never gets the chance to hydrate properly when she's working, and goes to bed in her underwear. Tomorrow's another day.

O : O : O :

In the morning, before Jen gets up at 10:30, Lou Pallotta is on the phone with one of the twelve other gym owners in Philly, working on Steve's idea for a local tournament for female fighters. He's already talked to two guys, and while one wasn't interested, the other was. He's got a few women training with him, and at least one of them is ready to hit the circuit. Lou will talk to everyone, and he's betting he already knows who will participate, and who will go the extra step and help organize. The big issue, of course, is sponsorship, and that's second on the to-do list, once he's lined up at least eight girl fighters and an available venue.

If you pressed Lou on the subject, he'd admit that calling them "girl fighters" is probably not appropriate. Those women train just as hard, just as long, and he's got respect for them. But old habits die hard, and "girls" is how he thinks of women who aren't old enough to have babysat him.

The guy Lou is talking to right now is Frank Campana. Frank's a good guy, by Lou's lights, and a very friendly one. But he's big-time now, even more so since his guy won that first Sparta tournament for middleweights, and he's spending most of his time training pros. _Male_ pros, that is. Although Campana's fancy-pants gym hosts programs for beginners, some of whom are women, he doesn't have any women who are able to compete. And doesn't want any, if you ask Lou: the guy seems completely uninterested in women in general. A lotta guys are that way, Lou knows. The attitude's pretty common; some guys only want to train the best, and almost by definition women are not that. But although Campana doesn't have any female fighters and won't be sponsoring any tournament for them, he says he'll talk to the contacts he has at the big equipment companies, see if they'll sponsor part of the prize money.

On top of that, he's going to talk to a friend of his, a "well-known guy" he doesn't name, to see if that guy will do a teaching demonstration or something like that, either at the competition, or privately for the women who participate. All volunteer, of course, so Frank can't promise. But he does promise he'll try.

Lou won't hold his breath – these things often fall through. If he's guessing, he'd go for Frank's big-name retired fighter, Brendan Conlon, who spent years fighting on a mediocre scale, got out of the business, became a high school teacher, then got back on the circuit for a few months before winning the biggest cash prize ever offered in the sport, in the first Sparta. And then Conlon retired from competition – talk about going out on top.

Lou's seen the guy's interviews, and he'd probably be a good choice for leading a demo. He's intelligent, articulate, and he knows what he's talking about, plus he's relatively local. Has lived in Philly for years, despite having grown up in Pittsburgh. The scuttlebutt is, though, that Conlon's younger brother, the guy he'd beaten to win Sparta, is out of the military and training with Frank now too, so who knows? That'd be a real spectator draw, particularly if Frank could swing a Conlon Brothers sparring match.

Well, if wishes were horses beggars might ride, and Lou will find out what happens along with everybody else.

By the time that Steve's finished with his girls at 4 pm, Lou's got the event ball rolling: tentatively, they have six gyms participating by sending fighters, and they've got eight entrants as well as three alternates.

Lou's not kidding himself: this is a low level of competition. This isn't anything like a UFC event or its equivalent; this is more along the lines of those smoker fights held in bar parking lots and very small venues. They probably won't make much in ticket sales. But that's okay; what Steve really wants is an opportunity for his girls to shine, an opportunity to catch the notice of someone who can get them into larger programs, bigger circuits, better training. And Lou's with him on that.

They're going to call the tournament Philly Girls Punchout, which is dumb in Lou's opinion, but he got outvoted. And it will take place in the middle of August, at the tail end of a week in which that traveling carnival comes back to the city. They'll be doing the matches in a tent in the parking lot of the old Dodge dealership downtown, so there will be plenty of space. And now, all Lou's got to do is call up his usual advertisers, the auto parts stores and the local sporting goods shops and the beverage distribution companies, see if they'll chip in a little each for prize money. He sighs. Opens his phone book and makes a list of who he'll call on Monday morning. That done, he gets up out of his chair to haul his old bones home to Valerie's kitchen, where she'll have lasagna and some giardiniera, maybe, or maybe some salad, and they'll call the grandkids after supper.

O : O : O :

Late Saturday afternoon, Frank calls Brendan's cell phone and tells him about the upcoming female fighters' tournament, all the details, where and when and who. And then he stops, and Brendan, confused, finally asks what he's been dying to ask all along. Which is, "What's this got to do with me?"

"Oh. That. I thought I said. Well, I thought you might be willing to do a presentation, a demonstration or something maybe. Just for the fighters, or even maybe for the general public. You know, techniques. Or something." Frank's uncharacteristically incoherent.

Brendan blinks. "Well... I don't mind, exactly. I'll think about it, okay?"

"Oh, yeah, sure. Take your time," Frank assures him. "And you don't have to do anything. I just thought maybe you would."

"A demo, huh?" Brendan thinks a minute. "Hard to demo and talk at the same time, you know. Maybe one of the guys from the gym would go help me. Hey, maybe Tommy – "

But Frank cuts him off right away. "No. No, he's not gonna be involved."

"Just a demo, not like he's gonna get hurt or anything. It's not even sparring." Brendan's a little surprised at how much, and how suddenly, he wants something that hadn't even crossed his mind ten minutes ago: himself and his brother in a ring, in public.

"No, no, no. Absolutely not. Listen, you guys want to work up something after Sparta, that's your lookout, but I don't want him fighting in public before then. He's got some new stuff, and I don't want somebody doing recon on him too soon. I want him to be able to surprise people," Frank explains.

Of course it makes sense when Frank explains it, because that's what Frank does. "Okay. I see. Well, maybe Jose?"

"You can ask him," Frank allows. "Ask anybody down there except Marco and Tommy, that's fine. I'll need to know in a couple of weeks, or – better still, let me give you the phone number of the guy that's organizing it, and you can talk to him." So Frank gives Brendan Lou Pallotta's name and number, says, "Have a good Saturday," and hangs up.

It _has_ been a good Saturday, so far. Kelly and the boys are over again, probably because Tess hasn't had any good female conversation for far too long. She's got friends, of course, and other moms she hangs out with, but she's missed the kind of conversations that tend to happen when you talk to Kelly, all life and death and joy and dreams.

Brendan, walking out onto the deck to get Tommy's opinion on demonstration topics, finds his eye drawn as usual to the athletic build of his lovely wife, playing some sort of ball game in the yard with the kids. Watches her for a minute, then turns to say something to his brother, who's supposed to be stretching his tight left hamstring. Instead, Tommy is watching Kelly walk out to the edge of the yard and bend over to pick up a ball, and his gaze is focused and covetous, almost wistful. Brendan has to admit that Kelly, even dressed like a mom in capris and Keds, has a fairly enchanting rear view. It's not Marilyn Monroe's sexy "jello-on-springs" shimmy, but it's definitely attractive. And here's his idiot brother eyeing her like she's the dessert cart.

He backhands Tommy's bicep, and Tommy – well-accustomed to sudden attack – immediately backhands him in the same way. "_What?_" Tommy demands, narrow-eyed, though he also wears a faintly shamefaced expression.

"_You_ know what," Brendan says, raising his eyebrows. "C'mon. Behave."

"Oh, like you don't check out Tess' ass every chance you get," Tommy gibes.

Brendan can feel his cheeks flush. He's been a sucker for Tess since the first minute he laid eyes on her, bounding around in a short skirt and cheering at a football game, and he's certainly not going to stop now. "Yeah, okay, but that's _mine_. I married it. I don't have permission to ogle anybody else's, you know."

He's about to go on, when Tess turns around. "What are you guys arguing about?" He can't blame her, really, for still being a little uncertain about Tommy's moods; after all, she's seen what kind of damage he can do. Never mind that Tommy's attitude toward Tess has been at best helpful and at worst only reticent, he makes her nervous.

"Nothing," Brendan says, and Tommy echoes him half a second later, faux-innocent, as if Tess had almost caught them with their hands in the cookie jar.

Tess' brows draw together in suspicion, but she says "Okay," and turns back to the kids' game.

Brendan turns back to Tommy and says, "Be a gentleman," but quieter. "I know it's hard to miss that wiggle, but still."

"Oh, please," Tommy says. "It's there, it's beautiful, I _looked_. So _sue_ me. And see, even you noticed it."

"I notice. I don't _stare_. You were practically drooling." Tommy rolls his eyes, and Brendan sighs. "Look. I know she's cute, but she doesn't need this kind of attention. She's a single working mother, she has all kinds of busy going on, she's not available for... shenanigans."

Tommy gives him an annoyed, incredulous look. "_Shenanigans?_ Christ, Brendan, all I did was stare at her ass for three seconds. Which if I've seen you do it to Tess once, I've seen it five hundred times. Gimme a fuckin' break."

It was way longer than three seconds, but Brendan lets it go. "All I'm saying is that Kelly has kind of become like a little sister, and I want to look after her. I mean, she's been through a whole lot of shit. She doesn't need yours too."

Tommy blinks. Closes his teeth and his top lip over onto his bottom lip and looks away. The one of his ears that Brendan can see is pink at the tip, and Brendan realizes he's put his foot in it with his little brother. "I, um, didn't mean that the way it came out. I meant – " He's still searching for an acceptable way to express himself when Tommy speaks again.

"No, you're right." His voice is perfectly level. "She doesn't need any more shit. I get it." He props his left foot up on the deck railing and leans toward it slowly, working that hamstring loose. "Better go get this on the heating pad for a few minutes."

Brendan feels bad about what he'd said, and he lingers on the deck. "Some girl would be lucky to have you. Maybe you should date."

Tommy snorts, face up near his leg as he works the stretch. "Yeah, and where would I _meet_ girls?"

"I dunno. Church?" Brendan hazards, though he knows that's a no-go. He's got a vivid memory of himself and his brother walking out of Mass on a Sunday morning, following Mom to the car, in which Tommy is about eight, hair sticking out and missing a couple of important teeth, shirttail already untucked. Tommy had liked church as a kid, but he won't go with Brendan and Tess and the girls now. Every time Tess asks, she gets shot down.

Out in the yard, something happens in the ball game, because Jack and Rosie and Kelly are jumping up and down and cheering. Kelly's got such capacity for joy, he thinks, she deserves some because she's such a sweetie.

Where else _would_ you go to meet women? If Tess got run over by a bus and Brendan ever made up his mind to date again, which would take years probably, how would he meet anyone? Again – church. Or work. Plenty of single female teachers around.

He shrugs. "Grocery store? Library? A different gym?" He hesitates to suggest the next one. "The community college?" Brendan had done his first two years of college there, as the cheapest way of getting a degree.

Tommy straightens back up and shoots him a skeptical _as-if _look. "Yeah, right. I'm gonna go get some heat on this." And he walks back into the house, leaving Brendan feeling unsettled and unhappy.

**A/N: Okay, I confess: I know nothing about martial arts. _Nothing_. I also know nothing about the downtown layout of Philadelphia or how many gyms there might be in the city, or where/if a carnival would set up inside the city. (I've been to Philly but only three times, none of them with me driving, which would have resulted in my having some sort of knowledge of the streets.) And I didn't feel like exhaustive research beyond the very-basic. Boo on my lazy butt. If I've bollixed up something factual to an egregious degree, please let me know and I'll fix it.**


	14. Chapter 14: Goin' to Hell

**Ch 14: Goin' to Hell**

After dinner on Saturday, Tess asks Kelly again if she's gotten her child support check from Mike. Kelly shakes her head. "You should call him," Tess says. "Otherwise he'll think he can do this to you every month." _The bastard,_ she's thinking.

"I should," Kelly says, but she's clearly reluctant. "I don't know, though, it's Saturday night and I don't even know his schedule any more. He might be on duty."

"I thought firefighters could answer their phones unless they were out on a call," Brendan observes. He catches Tess' eye, and Tess can tell he's thinking the same thing she's thinking – that Kelly is still so scared of Mike that she doesn't even want to talk to him on the phone.

Kelly nods. "Well, you should go ahead and call now. You can leave a message if you have to," Tess says, "and then he can call you back later. But you really need to not let this slide."

Kelly heaves a tremendous sigh, up from her toes, and nods again. "Yeah, I should. Jack goes to get his glasses next week."

"You can go in the other room if you want privacy," Tess reminds Kelly as the kids run through the kitchen on their way up to the playroom upstairs.

Kelly shakes her head. "No, I'd rather stay in here with you guys if that's okay." She gets up from her chair, pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, and punches viciously at the numbers, then puts it to her ear. Bites her lip, twiddles the fingers of the hand not holding the phone. Takes in a deep breath, then blows it out explosively.

"Mike? This is Kelly. You doing okay?" Pause.

"Well, I called about the child support. I haven't received the check. It's the 20th." Pause.

"It's due on the 15th." Pause.

"No, every month it's due on the 15th." Longish pause, during which she twiddles her fingers and paces.

"I know you have your paycheck deposited directly twice a month, and I don't really care how you spend the rest of your money as long as you remember to take care of your boys." Pause.

"I've offered to do that before. In fact, I've got an Excel document showing expenses for the last three months, and I'll send it to you first week of the month, but I'm not sending you a darn thing until I get the check. That you owe _your sons_." Pause.

"You know you can set up an automatic withdrawal with your bank, right?" Pause.

"I _know_ you can, because we still use the same bank, and they don't charge a fee."

Kelly's pacing has increased, and her voice is starting to shake a little. "_Rat bastard,_" Brendan says under his breath. Tess gets up and goes to the sink. She's annoyed on Kelly's behalf, and she's going to get fidgety with nothing to do, so she pulls out the cleanser and sprinkles it over the sink before scrubbing it with a wet sponge. Might as well get something positive accomplished.

Then the kids run back through on their way outside, and Kelly says, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear that." Pause.

"Look, it doesn't even matter what you think about me or what I'm doing with my time, they are _your _kids, and the court says you owe them your financial support. I'm surprised that you're resisting that arrangement since we just changed the custody agreement. Because it would be very easy for me to take this back to court." Pause.

"Look, Mike, don't push me on this. I _will _call Child Services. I _will_ call my lawyer."

Another longish pause, during which Kelly sucks in an audible breath and Tess turns to see what's going on. Kelly suddenly sits down, right on the kitchen floor, and at the same time both Brendan and Tommy scrape their chairs back from the table and stand up, fists clenched. It would be funny, this twin response, if it didn't say so many ugly things about their childhood.

Come to think of it, Tess muses, it is a little odd that Tommy would be protective of Kelly – he doesn't know her _that_ well.

Tears have started to run down Kelly's cheeks, and when she speaks her voice is shaky. "Well, if you want to insist on that, you go right ahead and order those DNA tests, Mike. And you can pay for them, because I know the results already." She clears her throat, and her voice settles down. "Jack and Martin are your sons. I need that money in my account by the close of business Monday. If it isn't there, I go to court. Good night."

And she hangs up. Says, "_Crap!_" and then bursts out crying. Brendan goes over to where she's hugging her knees, and puts his arm around her, and Tess goes to hug her on the other side.

"Hey, it's okay. You're okay," Tess tells her, while Kelly makes attempts to stop the tears.

"Rat bastard," Brendan says again. "He'd be hard-pressed to deny those kids are his."

"Yo, I'll go kick his ass," Tommy says, still standing by the table with his hands curled into strike position. "Where's he live?"

And then Kelly laughs, right through her tears. "_Auuuggh_. No, no, no. Nobody's kicking anybody's ass."

"I know your daddy woulda kicked the shit outta him already, and damn the consequences," Tommy says. Brendan shakes his head in disbelief at him, mouthing, _Really? Seriously? _and Tess' eyebrows are halfway up to her hairline.

But Kelly's actually calming down now. "Call off the posse, John Wayne, I'm okay." She wipes her eyes and sighs. "Not that I don't appreciate the sentiment. Because I do. Really, that's very sweet of you, to offer to _kick my ex's ass!_ That's above and beyond," and she starts laughing again.

"Jesus," Brendan says. "Kelly, ten minutes ago you were nervous, and then you were crying, and now you're laughing. I do _not _get you. You ever been tested for bipolar?"

Tess does a facepalm, and then she laughs too. "She's a girl, dumbass. Leave her alone."

"That's me, emotional soup," Kelly says cheerfully. "I think it was just the release of tension, though, it makes me loopy. Really, I'm okay."

"You're sure?" At her nod, Brendan lets go of Kelly and stands up. "Uh, think I'll go outside for awhile. Where the sane people are." He points at Tommy. "You comin'?"

"Nah, I think I might better sit it out so the kids don't jump on me. Hamstring's tightened up again. It's not _bad,_" Tommy hastens to add. "Marco got me on the mat yesterday, and I lost concentration for two seconds, and it was all over. Had to tap out before he pulled it worse. And I don't think I iced it enough afterwards. It felt better after I stretched it earlier, but it's tightened up again, so I'm thinking I need to just move gently on it until Monday, keep it loose if I can."

"Get Frank to take a look at it," Brendan says. "Hey, I think I might have a muscle relaxant upstairs if you want. Or a Lortab. I got a couple leftover from my root canal last year, you want 'em?"

"No," Tommy says, and abruptly leaves the kitchen for his room.

"Well, that's more like what I was telling you about the other day," Tess says to Kelly as they're standing up too. "Sullen."

"Hmmm," Kelly says.

Tess goes to the freezer and pulls out one of those frozen daiquiri pouches with the alcohol already in the mix. "Have one of these, you'll feel better. Every now and then we need booze and girl talk." She goes to the cabinet for glasses.

"Don't get me drunk," Kelly says, "or I won't be able to drive home."

"No, we'll just split one of these. It's only got about three drinks' worth in it anyway." She rips open the pouch and pours the pink slush into a wineglass. "Strawberry okay?"

"More than okay," Kelly says. "Let's take these onto the deck and watch the kids – I need a reminder that not everything in my marriage was sucky."

O : O : O:

Tess and Kelly go onto the deck, letting the door slam behind them, but the windows of the guest suite are open, and they must be sitting right under them, because Tommy, sprawled out on his bed with his leg on the electric heating pad, can hear every word they say. For a veteran eavesdropper like himself, this is irresistible. Particularly since they're girls. He knows he's not going to get half the stuff they're talking about, but he thinks it might be a little bit like listening in on enemy communications.

Besides which, ever since Brendan mentioned that damn Lortab he's having trouble not thinking about it, and he needs a distraction. _Shit. No drugs, no drugs, no drugs. You're in training. _Pot had never really been his thing, and cocaine was too extreme, but when he'd messed up an ankle eight years ago, learning Muay Thai at Camp Pendleton, the doctors had given him Percocets, and they were _fucking awesome_, because when he'd been on them nothing had hurt – nothing. Didn't matter that his twisted ankle hurt, didn't matter that he'd never get married, didn't matter so much that Mom had died lonely and scared. He could even think about Brendan and Pop when he was on Percs, without wanting to break shit all over the place. Coming off them like he was supposed to, tapering down, had been a bitch, and about the first thing he'd done upon getting back to the States after deserting (yeah, he can call it that now) had been to locate a source of oxycodone – Lortabs, Vicodins, Percocets, anything. Plus some Xanax, for the panic attacks, and the occasional Valium, so he could sleep without nightmares. Ditching them cold-turkey, the way Pop insisted, had also been a bitch. And probably not smart, come to think of it. It would be so easy, _so easy_, to take up the habit again. He'll have to tell Brendan to throw out the old meds, or lock them up, just to remove the temptation from his head.

And it doesn't help that about the time he had started to get a really good fantasy going earlier, about Kelly and her adorable round butt, Brendan had smacked him out of it and reminded him that Kelly didn't need his, Tommy's, shit on top of her own. That had hurt. It was probably true, which only made it hurt worse.

"So. Everything in your marriage but the kids was sucky?" Tess says, outside on the deck.

"No, not everything. And it got worse as time went on, but there were sweet times too. Even in the middle of the bad." Kelly's voice has gone soft, like melting ice cream. _Do not think about her ass_, he tells himself. "Like waking up when both of the boys crawled in bed with us. Like when Mike would run me a bath, or bring me flowers for no reason. Take me dancing, read me poetry."

"Oh." There's a pause, and then Tess' voice teasing her. "And the sex?"

_Gotta hear this_. He rolls silently off the bed and sits down on the floor underneath his windows.

"Well," Kelly says, sounding like she's really thinking about it, "it was good, most of the time. I mean, it was like anything else – when the relationship was going well, the sex was good. And if we weren't okay, I wasn't interested in it."

"I know how that goes," Tess says.

_Women. They make no sense._

"To a degree, anyway. It's not like we never fight," Tess goes on. "Nothing like what was going on for you. But was it better than with anybody else?"

Another pause. "You're asking me if sex with Mike was better than sex with anybody else?" Kelly sounds confused. "Wait. If we're talking about sex, we need more daiquiri."

And Tess laughs, and there's the gloppy sound of frozen slush falling into a glass. "Yeah, that was my question."

"I don't know," Kelly says. "That's why his crack about the boys not being his was so nasty – I've never done it with anybody else, and he knows that."

"Oh, girl. You really should change that circumstance." Tess sounds like she might be getting a little tipsy.

Kelly laughs. "Look who's talking. You and me, we're in the same boat."

"Well, yeah. Difference is, _I'm_ happy. _You_ should go sleep around, find out what you've been missing." And then they start cackling – it sounds like Witch Hazel from those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Actual cackling. It's kind of spooky.

"Oh, good Lord," Kelly says, between cackles. "I am not up for _that_, good Lordy _no_. I just ditched a man, what would I want with another one?" _Well, shit. Not that it matters anyway._

"I was going to talk to you about that," Tess says. "You're wearing that ring that looks like a wedding ring, and it makes you look unavailable, so nobody's going to ask you out."

"I know," Kelly says. "I can always switch it to another finger if I want, but I like it there. It means something to me. It's like I made promises to myself this time."

Tess says, "Oh. Let me see," and then, "_Courage_. I like that. Did you buy it yourself?"

"Absolutely." And Kelly sounds proud.

"Well, good for you. But seriously, you haven't been out with anyone else since your divorce? I thought you might... well, there was that one guy you said was cute."

"He was cute, sure," Kelly says. "But dumb. And anyway, I'm not looking for a guy."

"Seriously, don't you miss sex?" Tess asks. "I would. I'd miss it."

"Sure I do. But not that much. I mean, I do have fingers, if I get desperate." And the girls crack up again.

Despite telling himself not to think about that, Tommy's thinking about it anyway. So much for trying to be a gentleman. And who knew women talked about sex like this? He sure hadn't. Huh. Good thing is, he's now thinking about sex instead of Lortabs. Well, that had always worked before too.

"OH MY GOD," Kelly says suddenly, gasping.

"What?!"

"We have alcohol and we're talking about havin' sex," Kelly explains. "Tess, we are _goin' to hell!_" Her accent's kicked up again, and he doesn't know whether she's doing it accidentally or not.

"We are not," Tess says scornfully. "This is barely even a venial sin. Don't worry about it."

"That's not how I was raised." Kelly says. "Alcohol and sex, a certain road to hell. We might as well give up right now, Mama and Big Aunt Doris are probably prayin' their hearts out over my eternal soul in peril at this very moment." She'd said Aunt like _aint_, still talking like mountain Virginia.

"Do you still go to hell if you're only _talking_ about having sex?" Tess wants to know. "Or what about married sex?"

"Married sex is okay as long as it's missionary position in bed with the lights off. Anything else, you're a slut and a hussy and a wicked temptation to men," Kelly says, clearly trying not to laugh. "So I'm _doomed_." And then they both start cackling again.

_So much for not thinking about Kelly's ass. In non-missionary positions._

"You should get out there, find some hot man and have some hot sex," Tess says, and giggles. "You should do it for all women who don't have hot men. Because I already got my hot man. And what was that thing you were saying the other day about sexy – "

"Stop _right_ there!" Kelly orders, sounding a little panicky. "I mean it, stop. I'm serious. I never said that. Never. You are delusional." Tess just giggles. "I do wonder, though," Kelly says, and her voice is out of the hillbilly accent now. "It does bring up an issue that puzzles me. Which is, do I like sex because A) Mike's really good, B) Mike's really good at doing _me_, or C) I'm just easy?" Tess is dying laughing now and she sounds completely sloshed, and this is doing nothing for Tommy's hard-on but he's almost managed to forget the prescription meds. "And the bad part about that is that even if I did manage to do some experimentation with somebody else, I might still like it, and I _still _wouldn't know the reason why."

Tess keeps laughing, and then there's a clunk and a _whoops! _from one of the two women, and then Kelly says, "Girl, you do not need any more alcohol." There are heavy footsteps on the deck as she goes on. "I need to get home. And you need to get your children in bed and then yourself in your own bed. With your hot man."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Brendan says, and he laughs too. "Drunk women talking about sex, I'm gonna have nightmares for sure."

"Oh, _no_ you won't," Tess promises, all flirty.

"Hey, Brendan," Kelly says, sounding hesitant and apologetic. "I shouldn't be butting in here, but I think you might want to consider having a conversation with Tommy about those Lortabs."

"Why?" Brendan asks.

"Because it's a notoriously common thing for war vets to have substance abuse problems. And especially given a family history of alcoholism... well, he did say no earlier, but it might be sort of an issue. I would be really sensitive about offering them."

"Oh."

And Tommy's ears have gone hot. _She saw that_, he thinks. _Bren's right, she doesn't need any of my shit._ And he thinks back to the last time he had any painkillers, in the hospital for his shoulder surgery before his court-martial, when he'd done his damndest to get off the Oxy as soon as possible. Doesn't mean the craving for them doesn't hit from time to time, but he knows he needs to stay away from even the possibility.

Well, that did it for his fantasies of Kelly's round and very MILF-y butt in non-missionary positions, anyway. He gets up silently and notices that his stiff hamstring has finally loosened up some. Good. He'll go ahead and take some naproxen sodium, that ought to help.

Outside, Kelly's calling the boys to come in, and assuring Brendan that she's fine to drive, she only really drank one, and Tess is telling Rosie and Emily to come have their bath, they've got church tomorrow. The noise shifts from outside to inside, farther and farther away from his room, and then there's a knock on the door.

"Come in," Tommy says, already knowing from the sound of the footsteps who it is.

"Hey," Brendan says. "Leg feelin' better?"

"Yeah. Listen, can you do somethin' for me?" Brendan nods. "Get rid of the Valiums and the Lortabs, okay? Crush 'em up and scatter 'em into the garbage can or somethin'. So I know they're not around."

"Yeah, sure."

"Don't flush 'em, they get into the water supply."

"Okay." Brendan hesitates, and Tommy knows he wants to ask. So he forestalls the question.

"I haven't had any in a long time. Not since I started trainin' with Pop – well, except for the ones they give me at the hospital for my shoulder, and I made sure I was off 'em before I left."

That's all he's willing to say at the moment, and it seems to be enough for Brendan at the moment too, because he just nods again. "Thanks for tellin' me."

"Figured you needed to know."

_A/N: The daughter of a friend of mine underwent addiction to prescription painkillers, and she told her mom that sex was pretty much the only thing that got her through drug cravings after rehab. I'm jumping off that anecdotal evidence here, and I'm assuming that it would be just as true for men. _

_War veterans are indeed very prone to prescription painkiller abuse as well as alcohol abuse. Which, along with being Irish, probably explains a lot about Paddy's drinking. _

_Also, I really like those frozen strawberry daiquiri things, but not to excess. And my very own personal Big Aunt Doris actually told me, at my bridal shower, that I should only wear pretty underwear to bed,** IF** I wore any at all. (She and my Great-Uncle Everette, who was a quarter Cherokee and the rest Scots-Irish, stayed married 53 years.)_


	15. Chapter 15: Married Love, and Pastry

**A/N #1: Okay, so when I said "M for future lemony goodness," I wasn't kidding. The challenge I took up was to write an intimate scene for My Hero Brendan Conlon, and his lucky lucky wife. You can tell me whether I managed to meet the challenge or not. (Thanks for the push, Nik216! And hey, that girl can write a darn sexy scene herself, go read her stuff.)**

Tess pops the girls into the bathtub as soon as Kelly leaves, because it's getting late and they're planning on 9:00 Mass in the morning. And also because the daiquiris and the girl talk has gone to work on her, making her want to be very close to her husband as soon as possible.

Brendan comes in while she's washing Rosie's hair, and pulls two bottles of pills out of the medicine cabinet (they keep a child lock on it, just in case). He comes over and kisses Tess on the top of her head, then goes out. Tess wonders briefly what he's doing with them before she rinses Rosie's curly hair carefully, and conditions and rinses it again. Then it's Emily's turn, and within half an hour the girls are tucked up in bed with stuffed animals and kissed cheeks.

Tess goes downstairs to make sure the doors are locked and the lights are off, and to find her husband. She's planning to take Kelly's advice and take her very own hot man to bed, if she can get her hands on him – he's not in the living room nor the basement TV room, but when she comes back upstairs to the kitchen she hears him talking to Tommy in the guest suite, and sighs. Who knows how long that'll take?

She heads back upstairs and brushes her teeth, then her hair. Still no Brendan. She sighs again. Admits to herself that she never imagined Tommy's presence in her house would disrupt married time. Still, it's not his fault. They've got so much to catch up on, so much to rebuild, and even if they do it man-style, three sentences at a time over a baseball game or taking swats at each other in the gym on Saturdays, she's had Brendan all to herself for sixteen years now. She can afford to be less possessive of his time and attention. After all, he'll be up to sleep with her soon, same as always.

And in the meantime, maybe she can make some preparations. Struck by an idea, she goes back into the bedroom and pulls out some candles in glass containers that she's been saving for a special occasion. Tonight can be special too; it doesn't have to be an anniversary. She lights the candles, and then goes digging in her underwear drawer for something nice. Usually she sleeps in a tank top and her cotton bikinis, but there's something good in there somewhere... she paws through the back, reflecting that it's probably been too long since she's gotten out the honeymoon undies.

_Aha! Here's something... or this might be good too._ She pulls out a satin chemise nightgown the color of coffee with a dash of cream, and then there's a soft pink lacy camisole and matching lace boyshorts. Debates them with herself: the cami and undies are comfortable but sexy, and Brendan likes her in pink. But it's been forever since she wore an actual nightgown to bed; maybe that would be better this time. And no underwear at all, that ought to be exciting. Yes, the satin thing. She pulls off her clothes, slips on the chemise, letting the spaghetti straps settle on her shoulders so that the bodice slides down low, looking dark against her pale skin. _Yeah. He'll like that._

Just thinking about him, she's starting to feel heat and slickness between her thighs, feeling her nipples pebble against the cool satin of the chemise. _Hurry up, Brendan,_ she says to him inside her mind, sending out an ESP pulse. _Come upstairs. Now._

She finds some meditative jazz on the radio and turns it on low. And, oh yes, remembers to put on perfume. Kelly's made fun of her for wearing the same two things for years now, but Tess doesn't care. She likes J'Adore's pretty florals for daytime and Givenchy Organza Indecence, orange and sandalwood, vanilla and patchouli, for hot dates. Well, any dates, really. It makes her feel sexy.

Tess turns out the lights, leaving the six candles burning at strategic points around the room, away from anything that could catch fire (because that would be a real passion-killer). She turns back the sheets on Brendan's side of the bed, and scoots in from his side, making sure to pass her recently-perfumed wrist over his pillow, so he can smell her in his sleep. _Hurry up, Brendan_, she thinks again.

And there he is, opening the door of their bedroom and stopping in the doorway in surprise. "Wow," he says. And then he smiles. "Guess you had some plans."

"Oh yeah."

"I like the way you think," he says, and comes over to sit on the bed. He kicks off his shoes and stretches out, propping his head on his hand. "Let me see." He starts to pull the covers off her shoulders, but she stops him.

"You're wearing way too many clothes," she says, and sees the flash of his eyes as he smiles again. "Take 'em off."

"Oh, like the Chippendales?" he teases her, unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it off his shoulders.

"No, just get them off." Tess is in no mood for silly games. She wants to be kissed, from lips to earlobes and shoulders to knees, and all the good points in between. She wants to be touched and held and stroked, invaded and plundered, all the treasures of her body his for the taking. And she wants his, too.

"Let me see," he says again, tugging gently at the covers. She lets them slip down to her waist, gratified to hear his soft intake of breath. "God, Tess, you're so beautiful."

"So are you," she tells him honestly. He is. Has always been, really, but the longer they're married, the more beautiful he is to her. Over the course of their time together, he's gone from "that cute wrestler with the great smile" to "my boyfriend who kisses me with his whole heart," to "my new husband" to "the father of my children" to "the other half of my soul." He might drive her nuts from time to time, but she'd never trade. Never, never, never. "Now. Clothes off, please."

"Miss Impatient," he says, laughing softly, but he tosses the shirt on the floor. Strips off socks and jeans and (finally!) boxers, and starts to lean up over her, but she pushes on his shoulder so that he falls on his back to the bed. She leans up on her elbow and she kisses him, letting her lips linger on his before tasting the inside of his lower lip.

"I love you," she says, and he says it back, sliding his hands around her waist and pulling her closer. One hand slides farther down, smoothing the satin over her hip, and pauses as it registers with him that there's nothing underneath the nightgown.

"Nice," he whispers.

"Uh-huh," she whispers back, running her hand across his chest. He's got the right amount of hair on it, she thinks – not so much that she thinks of chimps, but enough that his masculinity is very apparent. She doesn't quite get the current fad for waxing a guy's chest. It used to be just for bodybuilders, because the chest hair obscured the muscle development, but now it seems like every Jersey gym rat who can bench 250 (or not) wants to show off his pecs. Still, she thinks Brendan's chest is perfect just as it is –_ plenty _defined, thanks. Damn sexy. She sits back a bit, and caresses him from shoulders to waist, and then back up again. "I'm doing this," she says when he starts to reach for her again. "You can touch me in a little while."

He sighs, and leans back, pulling her pillow over to behind his head. "I'm not complaining, but what brought all this on?"

"Talking to Kelly about how much I'd miss you if I didn't have you," she says, leaning over to kiss his neck. "I want you, I want my hands on you. And I want you _all over_ me before you're inside me." She hears his catch his breath, and then despite her instruction not to touch her yet, his hands are warm on her waist and then her hips, and then up under her nightgown, cupping her butt in his hands.

"Can't help it," he says, and pulls her head up to kiss her deeply before returning his hands to her ass. "God, Tess, you are so..." he says into her mouth, and then stops because she lets her hands drift down that line of hair that bisects his abdoment and into pleasure territory. It's quite clear how much he's enjoying this, and he feels good in her hand, so hard under the soft skin. She thinks how he will feel inside her, and almost moans in anticipation as she begins to stroke him, smoothing the little bead of moisture at the tip over all that good hardness. He makes a soft sound of pleasure and tips his head back. "Tess," he whispers, and the heat in her abdomen increases.

She kisses down his chest, taking her time, trailing her free hand after her mouth, feeling his heart beat faster, until she reaches what's in her other hand. She kisses that too, delicately, everywhere she can reach, before starting to use her tongue, long strokes up and down, and then taking him completely into her mouth. He makes a sound that's half-gasp, half groan, and she's suddenly exultant. _I'm really good at doing you_, she thinks. And she ought to be, they've had enough practice.

She doesn't stop until he pats her shoulder and says, "Stop now, or this will be over way too fast." He sounds breathless and greedy, and she can't help laughing at her power.

She stops laughing when he grabs her shoulders and flips her onto her back, because suddenly his hands are on her thighs and he's kissing her neck, and he feels _so good_. She rests her hands on his shoulders, right where his deltoids swell at the tops of his arms. He kisses from her neck down to just where the neckline of her nightgown begins, and he kisses right along that line from shoulder down to her cleavage and back up to the other shoulder, and all it does is make her crazy to have his mouth on her breasts.

"Shh," he says. "Don't wake up the girls." And then he pulls the neckline of her chemise down, exposing the tops of her breasts, and begins to kiss there too, gentle hungry kisses that cover her breasts and then her nipples, one side and then the other. She goes mindless under his mouth, and when he sucks one of her nipples into his mouth, she whimpers with the pleasure of it.

All the while, his fingers have been sliding up and up, slowly, lingering on the inner skin of her thighs, and up and _up_, to where she's been aching for him for the last hour, at least, and she manages to stifle her groan at the feel of his fingers stroking her there. Because he's really good at doing her, too. And he is, just like she asked, _all over_ her – kissing, caressing, pressing against her. She's just going to die unless she has him inside her soon. "Brendan," she pleads, and hears him laugh just a little.

"What, now?"

"Now!" She tries to pull him up to where she can hold him, pull his groin into hers, but he's not having any of that.

"Not yet." His hair feels like feathers against her thighs, against her belly, and at some point he reaches up the bed and grabs the pillow and shoves it at her, their old wordless communication for shut up, you're too loud, do you really want to be interrupted? It's a signal that came out of hurried clandestine encounters in her childhood bedroom, or, infrequently, his, if his father was out drinking late or passed out in the morning.

This isn't hurried. And it isn't clandestine either, but neither one of them wants to explain what exactly Mommy and Daddy are doing naked in their bed.

He knows exactly what combination of moves to make with her, and before long she's falling headlong into orgasm, crying out into the pillow, writhing with the sensation. And it isn't long after that that he finally strips the nightgown from her body and leans to take her completely, pulling her hips off the bed toward him, thusting harder when she begs for that (but quietly, quietly). "Oh, Tess," he says against her ear. "I love you, oh Tess please. Please soon." And just the sound of his voice sets her off again, smaller and sweeter and so so very good.

"_Yes_," she says in his ear when she comes again, and bites his earlobe, and he groans into her shoulder, pushing so deeply inside her as he finishes too.

It's hot in the bedroom now, so he rolls off her and strokes her arm, then her face. "Whew. Damn."

"I know," she says, and they lie together with a few inches between them, holding hands, gently touching each other.

"You have the best ideas," he says, with apparent satisfaction.

"I do," she agrees. "And I have another one, too."

"Yeah?"

"I think we should wake up early tomorrow and do this again," she says. She gets up, turns off the jazz radio. Blows out each candle, then comes back to bed and pulls the sheet up.

"Oh," he says. "I think you're right." He yawns. "I love you, Tess," he says, and pulls her close.

"I love you too. – Oh, and what were you doing with those pills? Please tell me he didn't need all of them."

"He asked me to crush them up and throw them away," Brendan says. "He _asked _me to. I didn't even need to try to harass it out of him. I think that's progress."

"Of some kind," Tess agrees, and then she yawns too, and they're both asleep.

O ) O ) O )

Tommy runs a little too far accidentally-on-purpose Sunday morning, and on the way back to Maple Heights he zigzags down Waterston two blocks and then over four to get onto Marshall, where Kelly lives. He can see why Tess says this is a bad neighborhood, but really, it looks like the one he grew up in – working class, older houses in varying states of disrepair, rusty Fords and sagging-muffler Chevys parked on the street. It's not so bad. Depends on what your neighbors are like. There's Kelly's rented house at number 1291, a small foursquare built in a style so familiar that he doesn't even have to go in to be able to tell you where everything is in it: foyer, living room, dining room and kitchen on the first floor, three cramped bedrooms and a bath on the second, laundry room and furnace in the basement.

The porch has three bikes chained to the railing – maybe it isn't such a good neighborhood after all – and a hopeful ivy plant in a hanging basket. It's nearly 6:15, and as the day brightens the streetlamps are starting to click off. There are very few lights on inside the houses, but then, it _is_ Sunday, and too early for church yet.

Brendan and Tess and the girls go to Mass every Sunday, at St. Augustine's downtown. His nieces are beautiful little girls, with open sunny smiles, and Tess takes such care with their church clothes that they look like little princesses in their pastel dresses, Emily's long hair in braids and Rosie's incredible mop of curls both very pretty. They all look so clean and shiny on Sunday mornings that every time Tess invites him to come with them, the big black wave of rage and sadness rolls over him. "You can just wear whatever," Tess will say. "It doesn't matter." But it must, or Brendan wouldn't wear a suit and tie, and Tess herself wouldn't wear her green wrap dress with heels. Tommy doesn't own a suit, doesn't want a suit. Doesn't want to dress up for God, either, as far as that goes.

He used to like church when he was a kid. It was one of the few places he knew was absolutely safe. If Pop was hungover, he'd still be in bed when Mom would come to wake her boys to get dressed for early Mass; they went early because she still believed that your first morsel on a Sunday should be the communion wafer, but she didn't want her growing sons to starve all morning. If Pop was by some miracle not hungover on Sunday morning, he'd at least be showered and shaved and dressed, and blessedly _silent_, until Mass was over and he was ready for lunch.

Tommy liked the stories and he was always good at routine, so he'd already be kneeling for prayer when Brendan, prone to daydreaming, was just catching on to where they were in the service. Tommy _got _church: you went to Mass, you went to Confession, you did what you were supposed to do, and God would take care of you. It was simple. It made sense. God the Father was like Pop: you follow the rules, nobody gets hurt. Jesus was like Mom: you screw up, you get another shot even if you don't deserve one.

It was only when all of Mom's prayers and his prayers and the prayers of Fr. Simon at Holy Rosary in Tacoma didn't work that he began to realize what a crock of shit the whole thing was. Forget the saints and the holy water and the prayers, God had reneged on the deal. Mom followed the rules, except for that one about holy matrimony, and anyway she was still _married _to Pop, for chrissake, she hadn't committed the sin of divorce, and still she got lung cancer. There was Pop, boozing and cheating and slapping his wife around, and it was _Mom_ who got sick, two years of misery and pain and lung cancer. God wasn't fair.

God was a liar, and Jesus was worse, because all the time Mom was moaning in pain for him, he never came.

Tommy hasn't set foot in a church or spoken to a chaplain since Mom's funeral, an ill-attended, bare-bones affair that he still can't bear to recall. It had been the hell of a shock to him to find Pop's reading glasses set atop that Bible a few years ago. Pop a Jesus freak now? C'mon, pigs might fly. Just because Tommy's been rebuilding a relationship with Pop doesn't mean he's ready to talk to God. Or that he will ever quite forgive the things Pop did to Mom. Or that he will ever forgive God for letting it happen.

And anyway, he's not halfway convinced that Pop's a Jesus guy now anyway, not the way Pop still curses like a Marine.

The lights stay off in Kelly's house as he circles back past. She's probably still sleeping. He wonders which bedroom is hers, but he doesn't stop as he runs past and keeps running, slower now because he's into a cool-down phase, back to Maple Heights.

In the shower, he thinks maybe it would be nice if he took Kelly a little something. Just for being so nice to him, being easy to talk to. Just to be a friend. She's had a hard time. There's a bakery a little farther down the street, he knows – he'd passed it earlier on his run and seen them setting out fresh doughnuts and pastries. Maybe those would be good, and he'd bet the boys would love them.

Showered and dressed, he throws on his favorite track pants and a navy t-shirt, then decides jeans would be better. He changes, then realizes it doesn't matter what he's wearing, since he's just going to put the bag on the porch and leave. But his wallet will fit in the jeans pocket better. He grabs his gray hoodie because it's still chilly outside, and then has an idea.

He runs lightly up the stairs to Brendan and Tess' bedroom and knocks on the door. There's some quiet noise inside, and too late it occurs to him that he's interrupting a little married-time, but it's done now. "Hey," he says softly, before it gets any more embarrassing. "Sorry to bother you, but can I borrow your bicycle?"

"Sure, no problem," Brendan says, and it sounds like he's trying not to laugh.

"Thanks, seeya." And he's off down the stairs again, but not before he hears a quiet feminine moan. Yep, embarrassing. And also kind of sweet. After all this time, they're still hot for each other – he wasn't kidding about Brendan checking out Tess' ass every chance he gets – and that carries its own odd sort of reassurance. For years and years, Tommy's been sure that any woman marrying a Conlon man was doomed to a life of misery and disappointment, not to mention bruises and chipped teeth. But Tess doesn't look so doomed to him; she looks happy.

Is Brendan just that inhumanly good a husband? If he is, is it something you _learn_, or something you just _are_? That is, is learning to be a good husband like any other skill, like welding or riding a bike, or are Pop's genes too much to overcome? Does the fact that Tommy has "shit" right now mean that he will always and forever have it, or will it settle down eventually, like silt settling to the bottom of a stream?

He's thinking about it as he pedals over the four blocks to Marshall and then down to the bakery. He picks out half a dozen assorted muffins and pastries, including two giant chocolate-chocolate chip muffins that look exactly like the sort of thing he'd have plunged into headfirst as a little kid, and asks the clerk to put the white paper bag into a plastic one with handles so he can sling it across the handlebars.

Back at 1291 Marshall, the lights are on somewhere in the back of the house. So she's up. That's okay; he'll just knock on the door and leave the bag. His mother would probably have told him to wait until somebody answered, but that might be sort of embarrassing. What would he say? "I like you, I brought you baked goods." Uh, _no_. "You make me think of my mother, if my mother were younger and had a great ass and wasn't actually my mother – have a Danish"? _No, that's creepy_. "You've had a rough time, with the fisty drunk husband and all, so I thought you'd like a carb overload"? _Completely hopeless_.

Maybe it would just be best not to talk to women at all.

As things happen, he's on the second step up to the porch when the front door opens and she leans down to pick up the newspaper and sees him. "Tommy," she says, as if it's a pleasant surprise, and gives him that great light-up smile of hers. "Hi."

So he's going to have to explain the damn bakery bag after all. "Yeah, I... um. I was by here earlier on my run and I just thought you and the boys might like these." He holds out the bag.

"Here."

"Well, thank you." she says. Still sounds surprised, but not like _oh-my-God-there's-a-pastry-freak-on-my-front-porch _. "What's this?" She pulls the white Magruder's Bakery bag out of the plastic one. "Oh, this smells _great!_ This is so thoughtful of you – the boys will be thrilled. Come on in."

"No, I just – no, I'm gonna just go. Back home. To Brendan's." Could he possibly sound any more like a moron?

"No, come on, _really_," she says, still smiling. "Please stay. I just made some coffee and scrambled eggs, and the boys should be down for breakfast any minute. They're gonna dive right into these." He's not sure which thing is making the offer so hard to resist – her smile or the idea of seeing two little boys eyebrow-deep in chocolate muffin – but he finds himself following her inside.

So he sit at her cherry dining table and eats scrambled eggs with sauteed red bell peppers and a sprinkling of cheddar-jack cheese (_shut up, Frank, it's probably less than a tablespoon_) and drinks some really good coffee, while her two boys pile into chairs and plow through their own eggs. Jack, of course, eats the peppers, and Martin, of course, picks them out and leaves them on the plate, and when the meal is over it's obvious that they've eaten chocolate from the brown rings around their mouths. The coffee is better than Tess', not that he would tell Tess that. Probably fresh-ground, he thinks.

"Say thank you," their mother prompts, finishing her orange-pineapple muffin. Jack, of course, says thank you like a proper little gentleman, and Martin, of course, says thanks hurriedly and immediately makes for the door.

"Hey! Go wash your faces!" Kelly orders.

"'Kay, Mom," Jack says, following his brother out.

"I'll have to check on the face-washing deal in a bit," she says to Tommy. "We're going to church in an hour or so, and I'd rather they not look like they've been eating mud pies."

"It's cute," Tommy tells her. Because it is, really. They're just boys.

"Yeah, well, my theory is that the messier the food, the better it tastes. Martin is _completely _on-board with that idea." She gets up and starts clearing plates to the kitchen. "Thanks again for these, that was a lovely thing to do."

"No problem. Where do you go to church?" he asks, just to make conversation. "St. Augustine's?"

"No, we go to Grace Life downtown."

That doesn't even sound like a church to him. "Are you Catholic?" He means, _aren't you Catholic?_, because anybody he's ever met with a last name like Doherty has been, and because he doesn't get the idea of those weird churches with no priest.

She laughs. "Oh, good grief, no!"

"You're Irish," he points out.

"I'm Southern Irish, dude. We're different. Back up in those hills since the 1700s or so, we got used to doing without a priest and stuff, and most of the neighbors were Scots or Germans, and they were Protestants anyway. So there you go. I grew up Church of God, and I've never been in a Catholic church in my life."

"Wow."

"You ever been to a church that's not Catholic?" she says over her shoulder, bending down to put plates in the dishwasher, and he deliberately looks away. _Does not need your shit, Conlon._

"No."

"Do you want to go with the boys and me today?" she asks casually, putting the last plate in and (thank God) standing up. "No pressure, just thought I'd ask."

"I don't _do _church nowadays," he says, and something of the bitterness he feels about the whole shitty thing must come through, because she turns to look at him. He can't hold her gaze, it's too – she sees too much, or something. Her eyes go all open and he might fall in.

Kelly turns back to the sink and runs water in it, then washes her cast-iron skillet and sets it on the stove to dry after spraying it with nonstick spray and wiping out most of it. This is something he remembers seeing Mom do, remembers hearing her say that you never wash an iron skillet with soap, and you have to keep it seasoned. "Well, maybe some other time," she says, like it really is no big deal. "It's not traditional church, it's kind of strange. Nice, but strange. I'm not a hundred percent sure I'm bought into it, to be honest, because I have some bad memories about some things that were said to me about my divorce – that was at another church, but still. I guess I'm still not... I don't know. It feels good to be at Grace Life, and the people are really great. We go maybe a couple of times a month, but I'm not sure it's for real yet."

He shrugs. "Probably not gonna get me in a church, no. Whatever kind it is."

"Okay," she says, and wipes the counters with her dishcloth.

"You gotta go, right?" he says, seeing her quick glance at the clock.

"Gotta go get dressed," she says. "I mean, it's a jeans kind of church – half the time the minister's wearing a t-shirt under a flannel shirt like some refugee from 1993 Seattle – but I just don't feel right doing that." She's wearing jeans and a faded blue t-shirt that says St. Ignatius ER Nurses Softball Team, and her feet are bare. He hasn't noticed that until now (_God_, his recon skills are rusty), but now that he's looking at her feet he really looks. She's done her toenails bright pink. And her feet are small, just like her, and pretty. "I usually wear dress pants or a skirt or something. The boys aren't that happy I make them dress up, but when I say 'dress up' to them, it's khakis and a polo shirt. My poor brother had to wear a suit and tie to church when we were kids." She shakes her head and smiles. "Ah, poor Noah. And of course the shirttail would be untucked by the time we got to church, so Mama would keep tucking it in. I think they drove each other crazy."

"I _remember_ that," Tommy says, surprising himself. "Mom tucking my shirt in six times in a row at Mass, I mean. And she'd just roll her eyes and smile every time." _Huh_. Now that was a good memory. Anything to do with Mom is still painful, but this time there's a sweetness to it. Remembering Mom's smile, the way she'd run her hand over his hair, that's a good thing. "No suits, though. White shirt and tie and navy dress pants, that's what we wore, and I always got Brendan's outgrown pants."

"Yeah. Martin doesn't care that he gets Jack's clothes, but then Martin doesn't care about clothes, so it's all good." She takes another quick look at the clock.

"I gotta jet," he says before she can say it, and gets up. "Thanks for the coffee and the eggs, they were great."

"Well, thank you for the muffins. That was_ really_ sweet of you," she says, and her voice is all warm, and he looks away. _Be a friend, _he reminds himself sternly. _She does not need your shit._

"Hey, no problem. See ya." As he's leaving there's the thunder of little boys' feet on the stairs, and he smiles to himself.

_Hey, Mom,_ he thinks toward the sky. _Me and Bren, we're okay. You did good, Mom. _In his mind he's watching a mom and two boys, one blonder than the other, heading off to church. The shorter kid needs his shirt tucked in.

**A/N #2: I like author's notes. If they bug you, skip 'em. You're allowed.**

**Poor Tommy. He's still trying to figure this whole marriage thing out, and it's making his brain hurt. Worse, he's trying to figure God out, still under the impression that it is even possible to figure God out. It seems that most fics kind of gloss over this aspect of his character, but I really really think it's a bigger deal – to him – than most people notice. Look at the way he reacts when he sees his dad's glasses sitting on top of the Bible. It looks like shock and anger to me, and every time he says a word about anything religious, which he does, and _he's _the one bringing it up, by the way, the tone of voice is just so bitter and scathing. I think it's just like the accusations he tosses at his dad and his brother ("Where were you when it mattered?" and "You're my big brother, and you bailed on me!") - like, "I should have been able to count on God, but God let me down too." **

**SO. I'll be upfront, I have a belief set, and it includes God. Tommy's going to be dealing with his belief set off and on over the story arc, and I just want to make it clear that I think he won't really be at peace unless he can work through the issue, from the perspective that he used to believe in God, and now he doesn't, and he's not reached a point of equanimity about it. **

**My point, and I did have one, is that I hope people won't stop reading if I pursue the issue of Tommy's shifting feelings on the subject. Also, the views that will be expressed are not necessarily mine. And our dear boy will not, absolutely not, turn into a religious goody-two-shoes. Don't worry about _that,_ oh no. I've already written hot sex scenes. **


	16. Chapter 16: What's the Deal

**CH 16: What's the Deal?**

On Tuesday Frank grabs Tommy as he's finishing a sparring session with Jose at the gym and pulls him into his office. "Take a minute and come in here and talk to me," Frank says. "I just got off the phone with a guy from Everlast. I was talking to him, this is their regular PR guy, you understand, about helping sponsor a women's tournament in Philly, and out of the blue he asks me about you."

"Me?" Tommy says, wiping sweat off his face and neck with a towel off the stack near the door.

"Yeah. Well, actually he asked who I've got on deck for Sparta III, and I told him you and Marco, and he immediately jumped on that. This guy, his name's Peter Greendale, he's a big fan of yours, and he asked me right off the bat whether you would consider endorsing Everlast stuff. Whaddya think? You can say no, it's totally up to you," though Tommy can tell that Frank is dying for him to say yes.

"I already did that thing for Punchtown gloves," Tommy reminds Frank.

"Yeah," Frank says. "And that was specifically for gloves." Before Tommy can say that Frank knows he doesn't like Everlast's gloves, Frank goes on with, "I know you're not a fan of the gloves. But I see you with the heavy bags every day, and more than half the time you pick an Everlast leather. They're old school, and everybody knows them so they don't advertise that much, but they've got more competition these days. And I figured that since you like their bags you might be willing to say so and pick up a check." He raises his eyebrows and spreads his hands, all _whaddya think?_

"How much?" Tommy asks. "And what's involved? I mean, what's the deal?"

"What they're paying kind of depends on how in-depth you want to go. Tentatively speaking, they'd like to do a series of magazine print ads, maybe a billboard later on. Possibly a little bit of footage of you in the gym, doing a bag workout, you know the kind of thing that gets broadcast at tournaments and stuff, or the dedicated small cable sports channels. No camera in your face."

"Good. Not talking to the camera, I mean."

"Well, it's not big bucks. I know Everlast's a bigger company than Punchtown, but this campaign is small scale. They'll go $400 for a photo shoot and $1200 additional for the video footage. They want you to provide a quote –- something as simple as "I work out with Everlast bags" would be fine –- and they want to reproduce your signature with the quote."

"Sounds okay," Tommy says. "You think it's a good idea?"

"They're reputable and they'd be giving you money for telling the truth," Frank says. "I don't see any reason not to."

"I still think it's weird. I'm not really in this for the money."

Frank laughs. "Oh, no? You're out here bustin' your butt every day for free?"

"I don't like to lose."

Frank kicks back in his chair and props a foot on the desk. "There's no shame in making money from endorsements. You still gotta eat." Tommy shrugs. "Tell me something. When you were turning down sponsors at the first Sparta, was it just stuff you didn't want to mess with, or was it something different?"

"Wanted to stay away from the cameras," Tommy admits. "I think I knew I'd get busted sometime, I mean, I couldn't expect to be that exposed on TV and not get recognized. It was gonna be over sooner or later."

"It didn't occur to you before entering the tournament?" Frank asks.

"I didn't care." It's true. He hadn't, then. He'd just wanted to win some money for Manny's family, because he'd promised to take care of them, and because it looked like he might have a shot at it. And, powered by fury and guilt, he _had_ had a shot – a good one. Just as he's starting to think, _But Brendan fucked that up for me_, he stops himself. Because he's done enough blaming Brendan for everything that went wrong. And really, what had fucked it up for him had been his own pain and loneliness. He'd looked around and seen that he was alone, alone yet again, while Brendan had everyone on his side, just like it had been in the worst days of Tommy's life – but this time, he could give in and get Bren back, _this time_ Bren wouldn't bail on him.

And Brendan hadn't.

No, it had ended the right way. Painful, yeah. But _right_. Double-right, maybe, because now Tommy's got family at his side, even if it's a limping-along, messed-up kind of family. And Tommy's got a purpose, something to prove, and it doesn't involve punching holes through his brother to do it. He's got way more than himself and his own guilt now, and that's Brendan's doing.

He smiles without realizing that he's done it, and it's only when he looks up from the patch of carpet he's been staring at to see Frank smiling back, a very understanding sort of smile, that he notices how his face feels. Which is, _good_. It feels good.

"Okay, then," Frank says, still with that I-got-your-back smile, "I'll call Peter and set up a time. You care when?"

Tommy shrugs. "Whenever."

"Fine. Now go do whatever you were doing, man."

"Moving on to some core work. Be late for lunch today," he says, mock-annoyed, and Frank laughs.

"Go," he says, and picks up the phone.

And Tommy goes, feeling somehow better about this whole idea of letting somebody in his personal space with a camera.

O ) O ) O )

The same day, Jen is working hard at Russo's across town. She and Alexa have just finished a complicated footwork drill with Steve; he's been working the two of them really hard lately and looking pleased about it. Clarice, who had played softball in high school and been an all-state pitcher, has been having trouble with some tendon or joint or something in what used to be her pitching arm, and she's been ordered to rest it. Jen knows, though, that Steve's pulled Alexa up into the top tier for his most focused training to give Jen a sparring partner, and that it would have been Clarice if she'd been fit.

Alexa doesn't seem to know it, though. She's thirty-three, just off a bad divorce, and she's desperate to make something of herself before she gets too old. Jen feels bad for her – if she'd been ten years younger when she started, she could have been great. As it is, she's just moderately good.

Steve takes them both into Lou's office, and Lou tells them about the Philly Girls Punchout, and by the way that Steve smiles at her, as if he's just given her a surprise birthday present, Jen understands that Steve's the one who set the whole thing in motion – for her. Not for the first time, she wonders what it would have been like to have had a father.

Steve pulls Alexa and Jen back out to the gym and sets them to a fast-paced weights routine. Alexa can handle weights almost as heavy as Jen's, but Jen is much faster. The challenge Steve always sets her is this; on the last set of every exercise, do one more rep. He keeps the whistle in his mouth, to let them know when to switch stations. Jen's dying to ask Steve how this little local tournament got started, and what he thinks her chances are, but they're too busy. She's too breathless, anyway.

After the weights, they get fifteen whole minutes for water and rest, and Jen lies down on the floor with her legs up against the cold wall, letting the blood circulate back up to her head. She thinks about the color orange, how orange feels in her brain, resting up but getting ready for the sparring that will come next, tapping into _fast _and _forceful _and _flippy_, her trio of them's-fightin'-words that will help her keep Alexa at bay. You'd think it would be red, but she needs the reminder to back off, to keep her anger from carrying her into not thinking. Orange it is.

Steve starts them off boxing five minutes each into pads – it's slow at the moment, and Lou holds the pads for Jen while Steve holds them for Alexa, Lou barking commands like, "from your solar plexus, girlie!" and "use your hips!" After that, they put on practice armor like shin guards and head braces, so they won't kill each other, and Steve starts the round.

Alexa always like to come out with a left jab, so Jen just waits on that and blocks it without much effort. Alexa's arms are just a bit longer, and she's got a couple of inches on Jen's 5'6" frame. Jen's a lot faster, though, and she gets past Alexa's guard and lands a couple of punches on her midsection. She'll look for a takedown, but not too soon. She needs the striking practice, so her plan is to stay on her feet as long as possible in this first practice round. She ducks another punch from Alexa and lands one of her own, this time on Alexa's right bicep._ That oughta hurt,_ she thinks, and then as Alexa finally catches her with that jab of hers, right on the shoulder, tells herself to stop thinking so much, just watch and respond. Watch and respond. Duck, cover, attack.

They get all the way through the first round on their feet. Next round, Jen decides she'll take six strikes from Alexa, and then she will hook her leg. Which is what happens. Alexa goes down hard on her back, and in a flash Jen's on top of her, swinging fists and pinning Alexa's legs down with her own. Steve stops them, and then he stops the timer. They get two minutes' rest, and they start over with another five minutes in the ring. This time Alexa sweeps Jen's leg – good, she's getting better – but Jen hits the mat and then rolls, flipping around so that she's got Alexa on her back again. And then Jen twists, grabbing Alexa's leg, holding it in a position that is going to smart like blue blazes. Alexa writhes and tries to roll away, using her hips, but Jen's in deep and not letting go. _Just try to get away, Lex_, she thinks, shifting her shoulder closer to the mat, and Alexa yells. She's not anywhere near the breaking point, Jen knows, because she can feel there's still some give to the leg she's got pinned. It's not dangerous yet, she's not even close to damaging that leg, but Alexa taps. Steve lets the time, something like twelve seconds, run out on practice round 2, and they get another three minutes' rest this time.

Third round goes differently. Jen lets Alexa take her down to her back, so she can work on breaking a hold. She twists her hips and shoulders, reverses on Alexa, then lets Alexa take her over again. This time she gets completely out of the hold and stands back up, forcing Alexa to get up too. She goes full-out after Alexa, punching her in the head and chest and abdomen, round-kicking her, grabbing her head and kneeing her in the side and thighs. Alexa breaks loose, and Jen sweeps her while she's still finding her balance, pinning her on her shoulder with one arm underneath her. And then it's over.

"Damn, girl," Lex says, half resentfully. "I don't know how you do half that stuff."

"I listen to Steve," Jen says, and grins.

'Listen to Steve' is right. Eight months ago, Jen didn't even know how to aim a punch. She'd come to the gym after getting lucky with one, when some drunk asshole had waited for her outside The Palomino, and grabbed her, thinking he'd get some free tits-and-ass just because she'd been flirting with him earlier. (Much earlier, before he got drunk, and _way_ before she told him to take a hike because she wouldn't be serving him anything else that night.) She'd punched him in the jaw and been surprised at, first, how hard he'd fallen over, and second, _how fucking much_ her hand hurt, afterward. It had been lucky he hadn't been much taller than she was, too. She'd decided to learn how to hit, and wandered into Russo's, which isn't far from her loft. And then she'd seen Steve working with Clarice and decided she'd stay.

She's worked her ass off since then. Lost a lot of fat, gained a lot of muscle; she loves the way her thighs and shoulders look now, with the muscle defined. She still looks like a girl, and there is absolutely no way she'd even glance at 'roids, even if she didn't know Steve would kick her out on her butt for doing it. A lot of girls do them, but not Jen. Steve's been showing her how to work out and eat and rest so she increases her natural production of growth hormone, and she gets her protein supplements in too. But no steroids, and no injectable HGH.

"Go get your rest," Steve reminds her and Alexa.

"Yeah, yeah," Jen says, and suffers through the hug Alexa seems compelled to give every other girl who happens to be in the gym at the end of a training day.

It's not that she minds being touched, really. She just has to be in the mood for it. Sex is one thing, that's meant to make you feel good, and as long as she's ready for that, she digs a good bump-and-grind as much as any girl would. Hugs from a genuine friend, like Amber, those are okay too. She'd probably love a puppy, as well, and every three months or so she debates going down to the pound to pick one out. And then she remembers that there's no way she could take the dog to a vet on her motorcycle, and ditches the whole thing, until the next time she wants a dog.

Dinner is orange-sage chicken breasts, brown rice and a crap-ton of spinach salad with sunflower seeds, raw mushrooms and cherry tomatoes. Decent, if she says so herself. She puts on some Nine Inch Nails and does the dishes, then calls Amber.

"Hey, want to come over?" she asks. "I'm off tonight. And I know you're not working, it's Tuesday."

"After Dillon goes to bed, maybe," Amber tells her. "Once he's asleep, Mom can watch out for him, if he wakes up. And I can't stay late." Dillon is Amber's three-year-old, from a previous relationship to a dealer-in-illegal-substances named Sam. Sam went to jail about the time Amber noticed she was knocked up, and the best way she could make it financially was to move back in with her mom and younger sister. She worked two jobs until Dillon was born, then after she got her body back she started stripping at Tailfeathers. She's still working there, and she's always gotten better tips than Jen had anyway.

"That's cool. Thought we could watch a chick flick or something. I've got a couple of things I borrowed at the library."

"What things?" Amber sounds suspicious. Looks like she's still blaming Jen for last year's disastrous viewing of "Bride Wars." Well, that one _was _really terrible.

"I have '27 Dresses'. And 'Grosse Point Blank', which come to think of it is not really a chick flick."

"Ugh."

"It has John Cusack in it," Jen cajoles. She's still got a massive secret crush on John Cusack, born of watching too many stupid 80s teenager movies at that one foster home where the mom was still, like, _stuck _in 1985. Meeting Johnny C onscreen had been worth it, though. He's wry and funny and smart and hot in a cute-but-not-really sort of way. "And he's an assassin."

"Assassin sounds good," Amber says, cheering up. "Okay, that. You got popcorn?"

"No. And you cannot have it here. It will submarine my diet. Eat your popcorn before you get here, or eat that gross red string licorice instead. I _hate_ that stuff."

"Okay, I'll grab the Twizzlers," Amber says. "It'll probably be 8:30 or after."

"No prob, see ya then." She kills the hour and a half before Amber gets there by going down to the basement and starting a load of dark laundry, stretching, and watching random MMA stuff on her laptop. She's a big fan of Ronda Rousey, with her tenacity and smarts and strong thighs.

Jen is actually piggybacking, with permission, her internet service off her neighbors, three gay guys who share the much larger apartment next door. Dagan, Cole, and Grey (even their given names sound gay) had been college buddies before they decided to share rent. Dagan and Cole had been lovers at one point, and it's those two that have occasional drunk screaming fights, usually when Grey's out. Grey's the calm one, anyway. On Screaming Drunk Nights, all it takes is Grey walking in the door, telling Dagan to get some sleep and Cole to go eat some damn _carbs_, for God's sake, to stop the yelling. He'd told Jen once, when they were doing laundry downstairs, "I don't know why they don't just hook up for good again. They're perfect for each other, and they fight because they're jealous. I think maybe they're scared of loving each other too much, or something."

"What about you?" she'd asked him. Because Grey is _gorgeous_. And _smart_. He works in one of the big medical labs downtown, saving up some money before he goes back to grad school to get his PhD in Bioengineering. And he has wavy brown hair down to the middle of his back, sparkly hazel eyes, and some killer guns and abs (they're pretty visible under the wifebeater tank tops he wears to do laundry in). Kind of a waste of good genetic material, if you ask Jen. But if you like guys, you like guys, and there it is. Oh well.

"Haven't met the right girl yet," he'd said, and winked, carrying his basket of neatly-folded lab coats out the room and leaving her confused. Probably it's what he says to all his relatives in Baltimore, she'd decided, to explain his lack of fiancee or wife or girlfriend.

Amber buzzes in downstairs while Jen's watching footage from the first Sparta almost two years ago, back when the prize was five mil and they'd held it in July. It's still only for middleweights, but now it's set for Labor Day weekend, and the group of sponsors pulls together three mil, with the big prize at half that, one million to the runner-up, and the other half million split between the other two competitors in the final four. It's maybe not as _sexy_ as the first one, not nearly as epic, but it's settled into being a big-draw event, with lots of fighters vying for the sixteen spots.

While Amber is making her way up to Jen's loft, the video moves on to Sparta's title match, a guy from Philly fighting a guy from Pittsburgh, and the part Jen hadn't remembered was that despite having different last names, they were actually brothers. She lets the video run while she gets up to open the door for Amber, and of course Amber comes over to the laptop to see what Jen's been watching.

"What's the deal with this? Is this one of your fight things?" Amber wants to know, so Jen explains briefly about Sparta I, and the family relationship between the two guys in the cage. "So who wins? Looks like that one guy's pretty beat up already. And why do they keep talking to each other?"

Jen hadn't noticed. But Amber's right, they're talking to each other, or rather, the one guy from Philly... whatshisname, Conlon? He's talking to his brother, and the brother's not talking back.

The brother, the one from Pittsburgh – Riordan? He's really hot. _Really hot_. He's muscled up like a fighter, but the face doesn't look right at all. Jen knows fighters. Lou, for example, has got cauliflower ears, where in the ring he'd taken blows to the ear that caused permanent damage to the ear tissue. Steve's nose has been broken twice. This guy, though? He's goddamn beautiful. His brother's not bad, either, but this Riordan guy's got a face belongs in a photo shoot for... oh, something sexy, at least. Good alcohol, maybe. 600-thread-count sheets. Really decadent ice cream.

She says something to the effect that Riordan's hot, and Amber agrees. "Actually, I'd do either of them," she says. "I might even do both of them."

"Together? That's sick, Amber. _Brothers._"

"I wouldn't really," Amber says, quickly. "I'm waiting for Prince Charming. I know he's out there."

"You are clearly delusional," Jen says. Men can be good company, and sometimes even good friends, but they can't really rescue you from your own terrible life. She knows that much. And on that note, she shuts down Youtube and pops 'Grosse Point Blank' into her DVD player, preparing to fall, one more time, a little bit in love with John Cusack as freelance hitman Martin Blank. Because never mind that he killed the president of Paraguay with a fork, he's _safe_. He'll never let her down.

_A/N: Anybody who can identify the James T. Kirk quote in here gets a virtual tribble. I still have a massive crush on young Bill Shatner, and I'm not ashamed of it._

_Also, I picked up the phrase "core work" from my daughter's high school track team. For anybody who might not be familiar with it (yeah, **I **live under a rock, but that probably means that other people might, too), it has to do with strengthening the muscles of one's lower back and abdomen. The movement of a fighter's strike starts with the core muscles, not the arm, which is why every fighter in the film has such a killer six-pack._

_YES, I NOTICED THE AMAZING MAN MUSCLES. I'm not blind. See "young Bill Shatner" above. (If you're not familiar, go Google the images. Rrowr.) _

_And apologies to cross-country/track team members Cole, Dagan, and Grey for stealing their names, but I **swear**, our local high school is a pure-tee hotbed of redneck soap opera names I couldn't resist. Grey's a junior whose Science Fair project made it to the national competition this year, and he's currently heartbroken because his girlfriend Tori just broke up with him. The boy has prettier hair than I do. Cole, a sophomore, has an incredible head of curly blond hair, and Dagan is a nutcase freshman who still loves knock-knock jokes. _


	17. Chapter 17: Flat Tire

**Flat Tire, and the Good-Childhood Blues**

**I've forgotten to mention it recently, but as always, I make no claim to own any of the intellectual material associated with the film or script. **

On Thursday night Kelly and the boys come over for dinner (grilled trout with dill and lemon, grilled carrots and asparagus, brown rice, and orange slices). As usual, the dinner table conversation is peppered with various kid issues.

Emily: Jack, look! (Grins with whole orange slice in her mouth, peel out) I hab oranz teef!

Jack: _Cool. _

Tess: No, it's not. Emily, please use your manners.

Martin: Mom, Jack kicked me.  
Jack: Did not.  
Martin: Did too!

Kelly: (raised threatening eyebrows, plus ominous silence)

Emily: Um, oops. That was me. Sorry. I was trying to scoot my chair.

Martin: It's okay, you can touch me with your foot. Jack can NOT touch me because he is a poopy-head.

Jack (sticking out tongue): Nnngh.

Kelly: Martin, we do not use that word. Ever. And especially not at the table. Jack, you are old enough to behave yourself. No sticking out tongues. Do I need to send you both to time-out? Do we need to go home?  
Martin: No.

Jack: No.

Kelly: All _right_ then. That's enough.

During these exchanges, so routine for parents of small children, Brendan keeps an eye on Tommy, remembering how he can get overwhelmed with noise and turmoil. But he seems okay tonight – no fidgeting, no distant thousand-yard stare, and occasionally the corners of his mouth tuck in like he's trying not to laugh.

After the meal, Tommy and Kelly clear the table while Tess puts away food and Brendan herds the kids outside. He knows that Tess and Kelly intended to plan a birthday party for Emily, who will turn eight in a few weeks, so he wants to give them space. "Hey, come outside and help me keep the monkeys out of their moms' hair, okay?" he asks Tommy.

"Yeah, sure."

They've been in the back yard for awhile, Tommy giving alternating piggyback rides to the two younger kids and letting them climb him like a jungle gym, when Kelly comes stomping around to the back yard and stands there, hands on hips, lips pressed together, breathing through her nose. "Hey, Brendan."

Brendan, who's in the middle of throwing a softball with Jack and Emily, stops with ball in hand. "Yeah?"

"Do you know how to change a tire?"

"Of course. What, you got a flat?"

"Yes. I went to get something out of the car, and that sucker is deader than a dumpling. It_ would _have to happen on Saturday night, when everything is closed and I can't get it fixed." She snorts out another breath, then a growl of frustration. "_Grrrrr_. Anyway, can you show me how to do it?"

"No problem, I'll take care of it." To the kids he says, "Hey, you two throw to each other. _Carefully_. Don't bean each other. In fact, try some grounders instead." He rolls the ball to Jack and sets down his glove.

Tommy comes up, dangling Martin by both arms as if Martin's some kind of furless freckled gibbon hanging from a tree limb, and says, "What's up?"

"Flat tire," Kelly and Brendan say in unison.

"Ah, don't worry, we'll change it for you."

"_No,_" Kelly insists, vehemently, and the brothers exchange startled glances. "I don't know how to do it, and I need to know. So – just _show me_, please. And thank you."

"Okay," Brendan says mildly to Kelly, and the three of them, trailed by Martin, go around the house to the driveway where Kelly's beat-up blue Corolla is parked. "Okay, which tire?" But before he even gets that fully articulated, they see which one. It's the front passenger side, and it is completely flat. No way is she going anywhere on that tire. He shifts seamlessly into teacher mode. "Never mind. The first thing you might need is a blanket, or an old mat, or even a piece of cardboard to kneel on, because you have shorts on. Got anything like that in the trunk?"

"I don't know," Kelly says. "Let me look." She pops the trunk release and they gather around the trunk.

"This'll do," Brendan says, holding up a ragged towel. "Now where's your jack? And the spare?"

"I don't know," Kelly says again, and then, "Don't _you_ know? I thought you'd know."

"Sure, I know where they are. I used to have a car just like this, and even if I wasn't familiar with it I'd be able to figure out where they are. I wanted to know if you knew."

"Of course I don't know! Mike took care of all the car stuff. I can put gas in the tank and washer fluid in the reservoir, and check the oil, but that's all I know how to do." She sounds really ticked, but Brendan knows it's feeling helpless that's making her so defensive.

"It's no problem. Okay, let me back up a minute. Do you have the owner's manual? People usually keep them in the glove box." Kelly looks more helplessly confused than ever. "Little thick book, about four inches by eight?"

"Oh, that. Yeah, it's in the glove box." She goes to get it.

Tommy rolls his eyes at Brendan, impatient, and Brendan shoots a narrow glare back and instructs his brother in a whisper to _be nice_. Not everybody grew up with a car-maintenance enthusiast like Pop, and if they'd had sisters who knew whether Pop would have shown them how to take care of a vehicle? Mom had certainly been clueless about cars, though that could have been by her own choice. God knows Pop talked about car maintenance enough. Get him going on the difference between a fuel-injected engine and one with a carburetor, or the optimal budget-friendly mileage interval for an oil change, and he'd sometimes forget to be in a bad mood; cars and baseball and wrestling were safe subjects both of them knew early on to employ as distractions.

Kelly comes back with the user's manual, and Brendan shows her how to use the index to look up information about the tires. Then he finds her tire gauge in the glove box as well and shows her how to check her tire pressure with it, and when they've done that he goes back to showing her how to find the jack and the spare. He's vaguely aware of Tommy taking the gauge out of his hand and showing Martin how to use it, and then when Kelly figures out how to take the jack and tire iron out of its little designated spot in the trunk she lets out a whoop of discovery.

"Good girl. Okay, now let's get the spare out. And this is going to be a pain for you because you're short, but you can do it if you have to."

Kelly struggles to get the spare out because she_ is _so short, but she wrestles it out as best she can, getting her pink t-shirt and her left cheek smudged with grease and dirt she doesn't even notice, and the eventual success leaves her grinning. Tommy's been standing there by the trunk, hands twitching like he'd rather just reach in and grab the thing and _get it done_, but even he gives her a little fist-bump when she manages to get it out and drop it on the driveway. "Watch your toes," Brendan reminds her. "You probably won't break any if you drop the spare on your foot, but it's gonna hurt. Just be careful."

So then he makes her set her parking brake, put down the towel so she won't hurt her knees, and set the jack properly in the right spot underneath the car. Watches her maneuver the jack to raise the car up high enough so that they can get the tire off. "This is a pain in the butt," she says, still working with enthusiasm.

"Yeah, it is. But you're doing great. Just be patient." When the car's up high enough he shows her how to use the tire wrench to start working on loosening the lug nuts. They're on pretty tight, but Brendan knows that either he or Tommy could have them loose without breaking a sweat. For Kelly, though, it's a different matter. Never mind that she's a nurse used to handling heavy patients and she's pretty strong for a girl, it takes effort to start them turning. And she's not having any luck.

Tommy's hands start twitching again. "I can do it for you. No problem, really. Happy to." This is no surprise. Tommy doesn't really have the patience to let her just work through figuring it out – he sounds just like Pop, who likes to run things, not teach things.

"No!" Kelly snaps. "Let me alone, dammit!"

"She needs to be able to do it herself," Brendan says. "She might not have access to two gorgeous hunks of man willing to help her out, next time she has a flat tire."

Kelly just rolls her eyes at him, and wipes her hands on the towel to get a better grip on the tire wrench. Another heave at it goes nowhere. "Goddammit!"

"If pulling doesn't work, try pushing from the other direction," Brendan suggests. "Sometimes one works when the other won't. Or try working on a different nut. You're sure you're turning it the right direction?" he asks, to test her. She is doing it the right way, but he wants to make sure she's not doing that by accident.

"Of course I am! Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey," Kelly says, clearly frustrated. "Crap. Let... _go, _you bastard!" Her cheeks are really pink with effort, and maybe with her little snit-fit.

"Hey, Martin, why don't you go check on Rosie for me?" Brendan says. Martin, bored, has started pretending he's an airplane, running around the front yard with his arms outstretched like wings. "Make sure she's okay. Play with her for awhile or something."

"Okay," Martin says, and takes off for the back yard, making buzzing noises.

"Really put your back into it," Tommy says, earnestly, and then shuts up when she shoots him a death glare.

Kelly does really put her back into it this time, grunting with effort, but the lug nut does not budge. Tries again, grunting even harder: no progress at all. She throws down the wrench, clenches her fists, and yells, "Dammit, dammit, dammit, bitchin' shitfire dammit fuck! Damn you to _hell,_ you shit-eatin' son of a goddamn _mother-fuckin' no-'count BITCH!_" at the tire, in the unbelievably redneck-sounding Southern accent she reverts to when she's upset.

And Tommy totally loses it. Lets out a full-on barking guffaw the likes of which Brendan has not heard in years,_ not years_, not since before Tommy and Mom took off. Sure, Brendan's heard him laugh since he got out of the brig, but that was gentle play-with-the-kids laughter, not the kind of belly laughter that makes tears come up in your eyes and puts you out of breath, leaning over onto your knees because you can't even stand up. He keeps laughing, his face all creased up into laugh lines, mouth open, eyes closed, and he's snorting every time he breathes in, completely out of control. A few minutes later, he manages to slow down enough to take a deep breath and get his eyes open, only to see Kelly looming over him like a miniature ponytailed Fury, her narrowed gaze promising nothing good coming his way.

"Don't you _laugh at me_," she snarls, and Tommy loses it again, falling over sideways onto the grass in hysterical abandon.

The ache in Brendan's chest is too painful to let him laugh much, although it really is pretty funny. "Kelly," he says, seeing her open her mouth to yell again. "Kelly, be quiet a minute." When she slews her eyes sideways at him, probably expecting to see him laughing at her too, he explains. "Shhh, _listen_. Just let me listen to my baby brother laugh like he hasn't since we were kids. This is a big deal for me." And he blinks, hard, letting the sweetness of Tommy's laughter wash over him as Kelly's face gradually un-mads itself and her shoulders relax, and the corner of her mouth quirks up.

By the time Tommy's calmed down enough to be able to sit up, Brendan and Kelly are both standing on the driveway looking at him with calm tolerant superiority. "Sorry," he says, though continued chuckling. "I'm not laughing _at_ you. Really sorry."

"Oh yeah?" Kelly says, her arms crossed, but she's not mad now.

"_Damn_, Doherty. You could have given swearing lessons to my drill sergeant, and that's sayin' somethin'." He still can't quite stop laughing, but it sounds more like giggling now. Not that Brendan would call it that to his face, but still. Giggling. "You just don't look like you could cuss like that."

"Looks are deceiving," Kelly says darkly, and then holds her hands out to him. "C'mon, get up and just damn _help me_ this time, will you? I know you're dying to show off." She helps him up, hands him the wrench, and then stands back with her arms crossed.

"Watch and learn, grasshopper," Tommy says, fitting the wrench to the lug nut, then giving it a tug. It moves. Easily.

Kelly's jaw drops. "Snatch me _bald-headed_," she says in disgruntled but clearly-impressed astonishment, and then, "I _hate _you. I hate you _both_, stop _laughing_ at me!" as the Conlon boys crack up together.

This time Tommy recovers first. Walks into the garage, finds a can of WD-40 on one of the storage shelves, and comes back with it. "You need this. See, once it's loosened you can turn it, no problem," and he hands the wrench back to her. He's right, the nut moves freely now.

"Well, how come you didn't mention it earlier?" Kelly says, indignant.

He shrugs. "Forgot. See, I never use it because I don't need it." He flexes just a little, and grins as she rolls her eyes. "And also I don't have a car. But I'd have thought my lame-ass brother might need it, since he does nothing all day but run his trap. Blame him."

"Hey," Brendan protests, but laughing. "No, he's right, I should have gotten it out earlier." He shows Kelly how to spray it around the lug nuts, then tells her to try the nut diagonally opposite the one that's now loose. She has to grunt a little to budge it, but it moves. The rest of the lug nuts come off. Twelve minutes after that, the spare is on, the car's back on the ground, and the flat tire is tucked into the trunk, jack and wrench and old towel stowed near it.

Tommy puts the WD-40 into the trunk too. "Take this, you'll need it."

"Hey, that's mine," Brendan says.

"_Jesus_. Possessive much? I'll buy you one," Tommy tells him. "He never let me use his stuff when we were kids," he says to Kelly, in the same tone Martin was using earlier. "He was a poopy-head."

Kelly laughs. "Don't let Martin hear you say that word, I just banned it. And _I'll _buy him a can. I'm not totally helpless."

"I didn't let you touch my stuff because you always _broke_ it, trying to see how far you could push it," Brendan says, fake-exasperated, and thrilled underneath because Tommy never does this, joking about their childhood. "'Can we skateboard down the basement steps, Bren? What if we fly the remote-control plane out the window? Can I borrow your batting helmet? Mine broke.' Who the hell breaks a _batting helmet_? I still don't know how he did that."

Tommy shrugs. "I put it on and let Mickey Houston take a whack at me with his aluminum bat, just to see if it would hurt. It didn't, by the way. It took eight hits before it started looking dented."

Brendan's jaw practically hits the pavement._ "WHAT?!"_

"You let him hit you in the head with a bat? You are not serious," Kelly says, laughing incredulously. "You _can't_ be serious."

"You are _too damn dumb to live_," Brendan says, appalled. "My God, how'd you make it past the age of ten? No, don't answer that, I'll have your head examined later. No wonder Mom was always having hysterics over you."

"Oh, like _you _were any better! You rode your bike over that ramp Joey Beck made out of trashcans and plywood, and you wound up in the traffic down on Greene and Missouri. You nearly got hit six times. About gave me a heart attack."

"Uh, okay, look, Kelly," Brendan interrupts, before Tommy remembers any more risky childhood stunts out loud. "You can drive about fifty miles on the spare, but don't go over 50 mph."

"Not a problem," Kelly says. "I'll get it fixed tomorrow. And thank you, thank you, thank you, _thank you_. You are awesome." She grabs her planner out of the front passenger seat, and they all go inside.

"What took you so long?" Tess wants to know. "I've been watching the kids from the deck and just decided to come through to see where you were."

"Changing a flat tire," Kelly says grimly, making a face, and Tommy starts laughing again – not like the first time, but he's got a good can't-stop chuckle going on, shoulders shaking, and Tess' mouth drops.

She points to Tommy, mouthing _What?_ to Brendan.

"She got frustrated with changing the tire," Brendan explains. Tess shrugs, palms up,_ So? _"Well, you've heard Kelly swear when she's mad, right? He thought it was funny," Brendan says. Tess shakes her head, amazed.

"It _was _funny," Tommy says through the chuckle. "She's no bigger than a minute, but Christ, has she got a mouth on her." Brendan gets a pang, hearing the words "no bigger than a minute." That had been one of Mom's phrases. Come to think of it, "got a mouth on 'er" had been one of Pop's – and one that led to trouble, usually, but he doesn't think Tommy means it the same way.

"'Though she be but little, she is fierce,'" Brendan quotes, and is gratified to see the startled faces turn his way. "Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night's Dream." He smiles at Kelly. "Might have been written for you, Little Sis."

"Okay, you guys scram," Tess says. "We have a party to plan. Out. I made lemonade and put it on the deck table with cups." And for the next half hour, the Conlon brothers play games in the back yard with children, for all the world like their own childhood had been this good, fireflies and baseball gloves and May sunset and lemonade and hugs.

_A/N: The Shakespeare quote is for my daughter, who is 5'1" and 112 pounds' worth of all-state-distance-runner, drum-major, valedictorian, going-to-Yale-this-fall AWESOME. No, she doesn't swear like Kelly, but she puts the fear of God into laggard track team members, slacking tuba players twice her size, and her younger brothers. She can even change her own tires._

_She turns 18, and graduates from high school, this week._


	18. Chapter 18: Queen of the Dance Time

**Ch 18: Queen of the Dance Time**

_**A/N: Sorry for delay. My kids JUST got out of school for the summer , it's been a very busy week with awards ceremonies and graduation for my daughter, and I am ready for the freakin' loony bin. **_

On Sunday afternoon Tess' minivan pulls up in front of Kelly's house. Kelly's invited everyone over for dinner, insisting that the Conlons have fed her and her boys plenty and she'd love to make a meal for them, for once.

Tommy, who has been relieved beyond measure to have the Everlast photo-video shoot over and out of the way this week, is last onto the little porch, where three bicycles are still chained to the railing. Kelly's added a cheerful Welcome sign to the front door, and the house smells nice inside, a mixture of lemon oil polish and grated ginger.

The girls immediately head upstairs to the boys' rooms, because Martin wants them to see his Lego construction. Excited noises come from upstairs. Tess collapses onto the couch, a relatively new overstuffed thing covered in beige twill and sporting several throw pillows in patterns of turquoise and coral, and sighs. "Gosh, what a day."

"Girls driving you nuts?" Kelly asks, grinning. "Let me guess. 'When are we leaving? How soon can we leave? Can we go now?' ad nauseam. That sort of thing, right?"

"You got it." She rolls her head sideways on the couch to look at Kelly, who just laughs and passes over something that looks like a martini glass full of something pink and slushy.

"In that case, have a frozen raspberry wine cooler."

"You are an angel." Tess sips, and sighs again.

Brendan's walking around looking at rooms on the main floor. "Hey, this is a solid house. Hardwood floors look great. It's old, but seems like it's in good shape."

"It really is," Kelly agrees. "I think the owners took good care of it. You want a beer?"

"Naw, I want one of those frozen fruity things too. Is it a rule I have to drink beer if I have a Y chromosome?"

"Frozen fruity thing coming right up," Kelly says, still grinning. "I'm sure as heck not calling your masculinity into question."

"You better not," Brendan says, mock-threatening, and sits down beside his wife on the couch as Kelly heads back to the kitchen.

Tommy, in between listening to this conversation and the kid noises drifting down from upstairs, has been wandering around the living room looking at the framed photos on the walls and sitting on top of the ancient secretary. It's probably an antique, he thinks, but it looks almost homemade. It's oak, clearly old, a nice mellow shade of reddish brown, but the edges aren't completely smooth and it's got scratches marring the grain, and the doors close with one of those old-fashioned things that look like a toggle, put in with an honest-to-god nail.

The photos on top of this piece of furniture must be of Kelly's family. One is of an older woman with hazel eyes and brown hair going gray, and a balding heavyset man with his arm around her shoulders. _Mother and stepfather_, Tommy decides, seeing Kelly's baby-doll mouth on the older woman's face.

There's a photo of two girls and a boy, in clothes no kid would wear now; the boy and the younger girl look a lot alike, and when he looks closer it's clearly Kelly when young, maybe eight years old? Gap-toothed grin and dimples and all, and she and her brother could almost be twins, except that he's taller.

And a double frame in the center – on the left side is a faded snapshot of a man who could only be Kelly's father, wearing a white dress shirt and gray slacks, with his hair slicked back with old-fashioned shiny pomade, standing outside a white frame house. He's got Kelly's coloring, exactly, the brown hair and the pale blue eyes, but his browbone is heavier and his mouth is a different shape, a wide mouth turning up on the ends with humor, lips well-cut but thin. His eyes crinkle up at the corners with his smile. You can see the whipcord muscles in his forearms right through the shirt – not gym muscles, work-hardened ones. On the right is the same man in full Marine dress uniform, not smiling, and he does look like a tough sonovabitch. Not a big guy, but tough as leather.

Kelly comes back in with a pink slushy drink for Brendan and a tall glass of ice water, garnished with a slice of lime, that she hands to Tommy. "I assumed you'd want water, you usually do," she says.

"Thank you," he says. _How'd she know I like lime?_ "This is your dad?" He points, and she nods. The glass is cold in his hand, and he wanders around looking at more photos on the walls:

A family group including a woman in her forties who might be Kelly's sister, with presumably her husband (burly and bearded) and her five kids, all with bright brown eyes they seem to have gotten from their dad.

Another family group, this one of Kelly's brother looking much older, starched and proud in Navy uniform, with a blond woman and two cherubic-looking blue-eyed preschoolers.

A recent school photo of Jack, looking both serious and dreamy.

Baby pictures of both her boys, holding toy trains and laughing. Martin's got a scratch on his forehead.

And one more family group, which must have been taken a few years earlier: Kelly and Jack and toddler-age Martin, and a handsome tall man with what looks like way the hell too many shiny white teeth. _Like a shark_, Tommy thinks, immediately wanting to punch the grin off the guy's face. He looks closer at Kelly's face in the picture, and sees the shadows under her eyes, the strain in her smile. _Rat bastard_.

To get his mind off the way a nose crunches under your fist when you smash it at just the right angle (because he'd like to, he really would), he turns back to where Tess and Brendan are curled up on the couch with pink slushies, looking happy and a little loopy, the pair of them. Kelly, perched on the arm of the couch near Tess, is looking out the window.

"Looks like it's going to rain soon," she says. "Maybe I better tell the kids to go out now, while they can." And she hops up and races up the stairs, coming back down with all the kids pelting down after her. They go through the kitchen and out the back door, and he hears Kelly saying, "Don't forget to cover up the sandbox!" as she comes back in.

"So. What's for dinner?" Brendan asks.

"Babe. It's not like I never feed you," Tess says, hitting him with a throw pillow. "You had lunch."

"That was hours ago. I'm hungry now."

"Yeah," Tommy agrees. "Lunch was good, but it's long gone." And Tess blinks up at him, looking surprised. It occurs to him that every time he says something to her she gets that surprised look on her face, like maybe the kitchen table had decided to ask for cream in its coffee or some such unbelievable thing. Huh. Maybe he should talk to her more often. Just to be nice.

"What's for dinner?" Kelly repeats. "Soy-orange-ginger salmon, brown rice, mixed steamed vegetables, and cantaloupe. Enough to feed a small army, because I have_ seen_ the way you Conlon men eat. The salmon's marinating right now." She looks at Tess. "Even Martin the picky will eat that salmon, so I assume your girls will too."

"Yes, they will." Tess laughs. "Martin the Picky. That's his, like, royal name or something?"

"Oh yeah. We got 'Prince John the Generally Benevolent But Don't Tick Him Off' and 'His Royal Highness Martin the Picky,' that's perfect. What about yours?"

The women start tossing around names for Rosie and Emily like "Princess No Bath" and "Her Grace the Possessive of Toys," which is pretty funny, and then Tess calls her husband "King Bring Me a Sandwich" and he calls her "Queen Tess of the Too Many Skirts," and Tess protests that she does _not either_ own too many skirts. Kelly laughs, and Tess suggests that she should be "Queen Kelly the Obsessed with Shoes," while Kelly insists she only has twenty-one pairs, and three of those are nurses' shoes for work, and two are athletic shoes, and one pair is her snow boots.

Tommy, who – if you don't count the combat boots now permanently stowed in his footlocker – owns two pairs of running shoes and one pair of waterproof Teva hiking sandals, shakes his head in disbelief, but of course _now _he has to check out what shoes she's wearing today: red sandals that look like glorified flip-flops. Little wooden heel. Red suede flower right at the place where the strap goes down between her toes. They are impractical, you couldn't run in them, they are completely ridiculous, and despite all that they make him want to keep looking at her feet. Her toenails are painted silver.

Brendan rolls his eyes and says, "And here I thought _Tess_ was bad. You have at least _fifteen_ pairs of unnecessary shoes – so which pair is your favorite?"

Tess answers while Kelly's thinking. "_All _her shoes are her favorite shoes. She's obsessed, I tell you," and Kelly bops Tess with a pillow, Tess bops back, and they start giggling just the way that Emily and Rosie do when they're playing something ridiculous, and Tommy can't help smiling just a little bit.

"There's no such thing as 'unnecessary shoes,' Bren," Kelly says, getting up from the arm of the couch and catching Tommy's eye. "Oh, hey,_ you_ need a name too. Prince Thomas the Reliable or something. Prince Tommy the Reluctant Smiler." Which just makes him smile more out of embarrassment, looking off to the side and feeling his ears go hot. Thank God nobody ever notices his ears, especially with his hair long like this.

Luckily, just at that moment his stomach growls. "C'mon, I'm starving. Were you going to feed me, or just watch me waste away?"

Kelly says, shaking her head and grinning, "Waste _away?_ Good Lord, the man's built like a bulldozer and he worries about wasting away. Okay, alright _alright_, I will feed you, you poor starving baby. Twenty minutes." She heads off into the kitchen and Tess follows her.

Tommy turns around and looks at the other frames on the walls: Kelly's diploma from Penn State, with a degree in nursing. An embroidery sampler that looks old, with the stitched words "Markd by Sarah Lou Powers, her work," and the date 1927. There's also a photo of what looks like high school kids in some kind of costume, on a stage, and once he looks closer, there's Kelly on the front row (of course), in a beehive wig and one of those early-60s girl-group dresses, the tight ones that fit all the way down to the knees and show off every curve, standing with two other girls similarly dressed, in front of a giant green... thing.

"I'm gonna go check on the kids," Brendan says, finishing the last of his pink slushy thing. Tommy nods. Drinks more water. Goes back to looking at photos. Kelly's not quite as bad as Pop for displaying every photo in the house, but there are a lot of photos. He should call Pop, he thinks guiltily. He'd been napping when Pop had called the house earlier to speak to Brendan; he usually takes a turn on the phone with Pop, but he didn't today.

Kelly's right, though: this is a good house. Not just the solid floors and the clean paint, but the feeling of it. People have loved each other in this house, you can just tell. The walls are all white, as far as he can see, but the colors Kelly's decorated with are happy, comfortable colors, the kind of colors she wears a lot he thinks of her wearing: bright warm pink, watermelon red, coral. Aqua, turquoise, and what's that other blue-green color? Teal.

He sits down on the couch and sets his glass on a coaster on the coffee table. Picks up a photo album instead. Kelly's still old-school with her photos: these are mostly of the boys, from birth to a few years ago, and every few pages her ex pops up, usually holding a kid. There are a few shots of the boys at the firehouse, Jack wearing his dad's helmet and Martin in his boots, and it's so damn cute that he has to close the book and get up.

Tommy is almost thirty years old, and has fuck-all to show for it. No house. No wife, no children, no real career, not even a damn car. Nothing. Fuck-all. And here some rat bastard of an ex-husband had it all, and threw it away. Sometimes the unfairness of life just makes him sick.

_Stop thinking like that_, Major Abramson's remembered voice echoes in his head. _You made choices, Tommy. You chose not to pursue most of those things. Is it right to be angry that you don't have them? _No, he can't really blame anyone other than himself. Still. Life just sucks, sometimes.

He walks into the kitchen and Kelly immediately hands him an enormous bowl of cut cantaloupe. "Hey, will you put this on the table in the dining room, please?"

"Sure."

"Thanks!" And she flashes him her great warm smile, and he feels better. It's the work of half a minute to step into the dining room next door and deposit the bowl, with its big spoon, on the middle of the table, and then to step back into the kitchen.

"Anything else I can do?" he asks, standing as far out of the way as possible. Tess is pouring drinks.

"Yes, please – open the back door and leave the screen door open. I'm utterly dying in here," Kelly says. It is hot in the kitchen, and Kelly's curls have kinked up in the humidity. So he does that, and all three of them sigh in relief at the slightly cooler air coming through. He sniffs deeply, smelling salmon and soy sauce and ginger and vegetables, and Kelly's perfume and that smell from outside that says it's going to rain. "And if you don't mind, call the kids in and tell them to wash their hands, dinner's almost ready."

The kids come pounding in from outside and pile into the tiny powder room just off the kitchen to wash up. Brendan comes in sweaty, too. "Really humid outside, it's definitely going to rain. Kelly, your grass is like a jungle. Do you have a lawnmower?"

"I do," Kelly says, pulling a dish of rice out of the microwave and setting it on the pass-through to the dining room. "It's out in the little shed, came with the house. But it won't start, and I don't know what's wrong with it."

"I'll have a look at it after supper," Brendan says, and goes to wash his hands.

The food is really delicious. It's a little cramped, eight people around Kelly's six-person cherry table, but it's okay, and even spats between people under the age of ten are at a minimum, probably because everyone's so hungry. There's something about this kind of weather, with a storm coming soon, that makes you want to eat – like maybe you'd better fill up before the apocalypse comes.

There are brownies for dessert, but they've eaten so much salmon that nobody's ready for them. Tommy and Brendan take the kids back outside for as much of a game of kickball as they can manage before the rain comes. It isn't long, maybe fifteen minutes, before the first raindrops start splatting on the ground, big and weighty enough to startle you, and they head back in.

The kids are excited, stoked by the rain and the food and the kickball, and they're loud. They run up the stairs, and there's a clonk-rattle-clonk sound like they've dumped out every single Lego in the house on the floor, and then – just as Tess and Kelly are putting the last dirty dish in the dishwasher, they run down the stairs.

"Herd of elephants," Tess mutters, and Kelly laughs.

Rosie runs into the kitchen, smack into Kelly's legs, and hugs her. "Kelly, can we do dance time? Please?"

"Well," Kelly says, looking at Tess. Tess nods, and Kelly leans down to pick Rosie up. "Yes. Yes, we can do Dance Time before brownies."

"And then we have to go home," Tess adds. "After brownies."

"Dance first!" Rosie squirms to get down.

"Rosie, tell Jack to get my iPod from upstairs and put it in the speaker down here, please," Kelly says, and Rosie takes off at a run again.

"Dance time?" Brendan says.

"Okay, here are the rules for Dance Time," Kelly says, pointing a finger at him and Tommy. "First, we do three songs, so this is going to be about fifteen minutes max, and probably more like ten. Second, if you are in the room, you have to dance. If you are even standing where you can look into the room, you _have to dance_. No exceptions. And the last rule is that you cannot ever make fun of anybody else's dancing."

"I'm out," Tommy says immediately. He doesn't dance. Well, he has been known to do some slow-dance cuddling if a) he's got some alcohol onboard and b) there's a girl in the bar he's trying to make, but other than that? Nope.

"Uh..." Brendan says, "Not sure I'm up for that either."

Tess sticks out her tongue. Kelly raises her eyebrows and says, "Well, if you boys aren't up to the challenge, we'll have to rethink that whole men-are-tough thing."

"Hey!" Brendan protests, but Kelly swans out behind Tess. A faint echo of "Chicken!" bounces back to them. "You gonna stand for that?" he says to Tommy.

"I ain't dancin', man," Tommy says. So Brendan shrugs and leans against the counter along with him, and they watch the rain hit the back window. "We could go check on her lawnmower now."

"Well, I ain't goin' out in that monsoon," Brendan says, and then the music starts, some happy little handclappy, whistly thing about being on _top of the world eh, I'm on top of the world eh_, and there's giggling, and he grins and shoots Tommy a look. "You sure you won't dance? It sounds like fun."

It does sound like they're having fun in there. And he wouldn't mind dancing in front of the kids, really, and he's pretty sure he's danced in front of Brendan at some point – but he's shy about dancing in front of the ladies.

Okay, he's shy about dancing in front of Kelly. Start having fantasies about a girl, especially if your brother shakes you down for it, and you get self-conscious in front of her.

There is more laughter and "Go, Jack!" from the living room, and Brendan says, "I can't resist this, I gotta go see," and he slopes off out of the kitchen.

There's more laughter as Brendan comes in, but no teasing, other than Tess saying, "I knew you couldn't resist," and Tommy stands there in the kitchen feeling left out. _You made choices_, Maj. Abramson's voice goes in his head. He knows. He's got one now. As that song ends something else comes on, something familiar – the Jackson 5 doing ABC 123, an oldie that makes your feet itch to dance. He finds himself bopping a little bit, and suddenly he wants to be in the living room too. Okay. He sneaks up to the living room, and looks in. Tess is dancing with Emily and Brendan, Jack and Martin and Kelly are all trying to outdo each other. Rosie's closest to the door wiggling around with her hands in the air, and she's easiest anyway, so he swoops in, picks her up, and starts moving around with her in his arms, and she's giggling, and it really is fun. _That's how easy love can be..._

Kelly turns around and sees him and her eyes light up. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing there, Conlon," she says, pointing a finger at him.

"I'm dancing," he says, defensively. Those are the rules, right?

"Technically, you are," she says. "But that's still the chicken-hearted strategy of a man who _ain't got no moves_." Kelly can shimmy. She throws one down right there, grinning at him, and damn if he doesn't get this instant hard-on, thanks to Kelly's wiggly round butt and all those curves moving sweet and sassy, and that wicked glint in her eye, and don't let anybody ever say he can't rise to a challenge.

(_Rise. Ha._)

"Hey, I got moves," he says. He doesn't really, but it looks like freeform hip action going on in here and maybe anything goes.

"Put up or shut up, then," she says, and laughs. And then the music changes again, post-punk Jet doing "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?," all jangly electric guitars and yelling, and this is a _challenge_, which makes his body get serious again and stop the search for a mate. He gives Rosie to Brendan and shakes it loose for three minutes, trying not to laugh, trying not to look totally stupid, and trying not to think about Kelly's ass.

The song finishes to Tess and Brendan clapping. "I did not know you could dance, Tommy," Tess says, sounding impressed.

"I can't," he says, as the next song comes on, some hip-hop thing with a guy singing, _Girl let me love you, and I will love you until you learn to love yourself..._

"No, you're pretty good," Kelly says, and holds her hand up for a high-five. "I take it all back, you are almost as good as I am, and you are not a chicken, John Wayne."

"Hey, I got it, your royal name," Tess says, "you're the Queen of the Dance Time," and Kelly just laughs.

"I love it. Hey, Jack, can you get the iPod?"

"No!" Emily protests, but Jack stops the music anyway.

"Actually, honey," Tess says. "We need to get you girls home for bathtime. I know there's only two more weeks of school, but you need to be going to bed at the usual time."

"Oh, Lord," Kelly says, her eyes getting big. "Ack. I forgot about that. Paycheck is about to take a big hit. I get reduced rates at the hospital daycare – you know, right next to the wellness center where I go to the gym? – but it is still expensive." She sighs. "On the bright side, though, Martin goes to kindergarten in the fall, so that'll help. C'mon, guys, brownies in the kitchen."

Tommy does not miss the speculative glance Tess gives Brendan, and his "whatever _you_ want" shrug back. He follows the dash to the kitchen, but slower than everybody else, thinking about chocolate. And Kelly's ass. And how it feels to just do something fun and not care about whether it's good for him or not. And chocolate. And what it might feel like to dance with Kelly in his arms.

Whoops. Boner's back. And it doesn't go away, not during the time that everyone but him is eating brownies with whipped cream on top, and damn, he wants one like he hasn't wanted anything sweet in forever. Brownies have always been his absolute favorite, better than chocolate cake even. "Do you want a piece?" Kelly asks him, and he has to get a good breath before he responds (_down, boy_) because he knows she doesn't mean it that way. He shakes his head, _no_, but she must see how much he does want it, because she smiles, and cuts a tiny sliver about an inch square.

"You can have that, can't you? Just for once?"

So he takes it out of her hand (_calm the fuck down, boy_) and it's like this little bit of fudge brownie heaven, and he has to close his eyes while he's eating it so he doesn't miss anything. _God. Brownie_. Not quite as good as sex, but still, he'd better not tell Frank about it. When he opens his eyes, Kelly's licking chocolate off her finger, and now he's got a whole new set of fantasies he's got to process, involving dancing and chocolate, and it's no wonder this damn erection is not going away, not when he's standing this close to her and she smells this good and probably tastes like heaven brownies.

But Tess is getting the girls to put their shoes back on, and it's time to go. _We never even got_ _a look at that lawnmower_, he thinks, but looking at the rain still bucketing down out in the back yard, he knows he won't get Brendan to wait while he goes to look. Well, maybe tomorrow afternoon he'll just come by and see what he can do. (_Down, boy. No, you do not get to play. Down, I said._)

**A/N: A virtual Venus flytrap to anyone who can identify the musical play Kelly's high school performed. Free virtual pack of dental floss to anyone who can further identify what role she played. :)**


	19. Chapter 19: Don't Baby Me

Ch 19: Don't Baby Me

Monday is a total bitch of a day, and Kelly is dying to get home and get out of her grimy scrubs, have a shower and dinner, and then maybe one of those frozen daiquiri things, but first she's got to pick up the boys from daycare. She hasn't had time for a Zumba class or even a run, because she's been running late all day, and she's tired and grouchy and on edge, and she hopes fish sticks will be okay with the boys because there was no leftover salmon from dinner the day before.

It had been a delight to see people devouring her food, she can't deny that. And she loves having Tess' family come over. Tess is almost like a sister to her – maybe closer, because Kelly hasn't even seen her sister in three years. Susan's got five kids by that flaming redneck idiot Scotty Brown, down in Wise County, and she can't be bothered to come see Kelly or Mama, much less invite them for a visit.

_Do not think about Susan_, she tells herself sternly. _It will only make you mad, and you're bad off enough as it is._

The reason she's so on edge is that she didn't sleep well last night, and the reason for _that_ is... well. The dreams. She can't even remember them in any detail, but she'd woken up after the first set, feeling shaky and achy, feeling her breasts heavy in her nightgown. It's the first time she has really felt the lack of a man in bed beside her, felt it with that physical ache. When she'd insisted that Mike leave, three years ago, before setting all the divorce proceedings in motion, it had been such a relief to be able to just sleep in her own bed, alone, without fearing that turning over would precipitate some sort of interaction with him, anything from an argument to unsatisfying sex.

And despite all the teasing girl-talk she's had with Tess recently about sex, she hasn't missed it much. Hasn't needed any release, until now. Because after the second set of dreams, of which she only remembers the tactile pleasure of skin on skin (and whose dream skin it was), she hadn't been able to sleep until she'd finally given in, slipped her hand under her panties, and surrendered to fantasy.

But it's maybe best not think about that at the moment either, because here's Martin already running out to the car without even waiting for permission from Miss Shelly. Jack waits, like he always does, and Miss Shelly hands him his backpack and pats his shoulder. Kelly barely gets the Corolla stopped in the pickup lane at Smiley's Friends before Martin's run around the front of the car to get the door open on the driver's side.

Kelly bites her tongue, twice, before she reminds Martin in a (relatively) calm tone of voice that he is NOT EVER to open the door without waiting for the car to stop, because it is DANGEROUS, that is why, and he needs to get in on the PASSENGER SIDE and scoot over, because opening doors in the driving lane is DANGEROUS, that is why, and she doesn't want him dead. "Yeah, Martin," Jack says scornfully, catching up to his brother and tossing his backpack in the back seat. She makes sure Martin's buckled correctly, and they take off for home. The weather's heading for summer, and the air conditioning doesn't really work well on this car – it probably needs fixing, but she might not have cash for that. Right now it's just Martin full-time at daycare, but in a few weeks Jack will be there full-time too, instead of only the after-school hours, and that really digs into her salary pretty badly, child support or not.

Also, she's got some reading to do for her certification as an orthopedic nurse specialist, on treatments for certain bone disorders, and she's going to have to get caught up on that too, and the grass needs cutting, damn, and she didn't get around to really cleaning the bathtub on Saturday so she should do it tonight. It isn't horrible, but she's missed two days so it needs it. Double damn.

And her sleep got all broken up by those disturbing dreams (not that she can afford to think about that right now), and she had wanted to go to bed early tonight, and it isn't going to happen. Triple damn.

Never mind.

She pulls up to the curb and gives Jack the keys to unlock the door, which he's recently decided is his job, and she grabs the heavy folder of reading material. Martin lets himself out too, and follows Jack in the house, and Kelly's gotten to the porch before she realizes that the grass in the front yard has been cut.

_What the hell?_ She's immediately apprehensive as well as annoyed.

She slams down the folder, and she's about to yell inside for the boys to stay in the house, when she hears two sets of feet pounding up to the second floor. Okay, they're fine.

She storms around to the back yard, seeing that the gate's open. She can't hear any lawnmower noise, but somebody has picked the gate lock and the lock to the shed, and it _better_ goddamn not be Michael Aaron Porter or she'll have his hind end in jail sooner than you can say Abracadabra, because according to their agreement he is not supposed to be here unless he's picking up the boys or she gives express permission.

Expecting Mike's lanky frame, or at least tools all over the ground the way he carelessly leaves them, she is completely taken aback to come around the corner and find a shirtless, sweaty, tattooed, sexy-as-hell Tommy Conlon, sitting on the back stoop and wiping his face with a ratty towel. He looks up and says, "Hey," just like nothing is wrong. Just as if he hasn't trespassed onto her property, probably broken locks, and gone ahead and fricking mowed her grass, like it was his damn house, like he's the one in charge of her actual life as well as her stupid frustrating dream life, and she is going to _get some answers_. _Now._

"What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing?" she demands, hands on her hips, and his eyebrows go up, as if she's surprised him, as if he had any rights here at all. "Coming in my yard without permission? Touching my lawnmower?"

"Um," he says, standing up quick like he knows he's in trouble with her, and that just pisses her off more, because now she can't look down at him. He's not a real tall guy, but he's sure taller than she is – well, everyone is, and right now Kelly absolutely _hates_ being the short one, hates being the one without any power.

"What in the seven levels of hell makes you think you can just waltz in here and – and _do_ stuff for me? I'm not _totally helpless_. I don't have to have a man do stuff for me, I can do it _myself_, I just need a little jumpstart sometimes, for God's sake! Don't baby me!"

"I was trying to help," he says, cautiously, and he's looking at her like she's a bomb about to go off, which she is, and it's just too much on top of her shitty day and Martin's constant death wish behavior and the huge to-do list and the erotic dreams, which now that she's actually seen him half naked did _not_ do him justice because he really is fucking impossibly gorgeous, and that's not even a six-pack, it is a damn _eight_-pack, as if that were even possible, and she can _smell _him, fresh sweat and male skin and gasoline, and cut grass, there's even a grass stain on his hand, and she's light-headed from suddenly having the kind of X-rated thoughts that are going to keep her awake far too long tonight, too, and she bursts into gaspy tears.

It doesn't last long – her crying bursts never do – but as she is starting to get a good breath his hand takes her gently by the elbow and makes her sit down on the stoop. She takes another deep shuddery breath and gets her eyes open, and he's put on his gray t-shirt (_damn, that was beautiful, don't cover it up_) and is crouched down in front of her. "I'm sorry," he says. Looks down at the ratty towel and says, "I'd offer you this, but I sweated like a pig all over it," and she laughs a little. "I didn't think you'd mind if I had a look at your lawnmower since we were talking about it last night."

Well, they _had_ talked about the lawnmower last night. But she had thought it would be Brendan looking at her lawnmower and showing her how to start it, or how to fix it. She hadn't expected it would be the Irish-American God of Abs himself mowing the grass and looking damn good afterward.

All the same, she can see how it would have seemed like a nice gesture. Because sometimes Tommy is borderline rude, and he's nearly always blunt, but as far as she can see he is unfailingly kind. And the kindness often takes some task-oriented form, she can see that too – in the way he cleans up at Tess', for example. Or his hilariously inappropriate offer to go and kick Mike's ass for making her beg for the child support check. "I'm sorry too," she says. "I have had this unbelievably crappy day and I'm not entirely rational right now."

"Naw, you're okay," he says. "I can see how that would bug you, 'cause I didn't ask. But I just meant to be nice."

"I get that," she says. Sighs. Scrubs her wet eyes with the heel of both hands, and only after that realizes that she's probably smeared mascara all over her face. "It's just – there is so much that I don't know how to do, and _I hate it_ that I don't know to do things, it makes me feel like such a baby, and here you've fixed my lawnmower, and thank you for that, _really_, I appreciate it, but I still don't know how to fix my lawnmower and I didn't learn anything."

"Sorry," he says again in a smaller voice. "Here," he says, and reaches up to her face, very gently wiping under her eyes. "You have makeup..." and he trails off, and she can't stop looking into his eyes because she has never been able to figure out what color they are, and how in the world did she wind up having sexual dreams about some guy she doesn't even know well enough to say what color his eyes are? Sometimes they look blue, sometimes green, sometimes really dark – almost black. Here in the late afternoon light of nearly-summer, they're a pewter blue, lots of gray in them, and little flecks of golden brown. She still can't put a name to that color, and she knows that in different light they'll look different again.

So she's staring, hard, not able to stop, and he just lets her stare. Or maybe he's staring back, and that thought finally makes her look away, with a frisson down her back and heat low down in her belly.

"Listen," he says, and stands up, "I'll show you what I did to fix it. It wasn't hard."

"So there _was_ something wrong? It wasn't just me being stupid?"

"Needed a spark plug, that's all. You wanna see?" So she nods, and he pulls her to her feet. Does something with a keylike thing he's got on a ring in the pocket of his navy shorts and pops the shed open again, pulls the ancient crappy push mower out, and shows her where the spark plug is and how easy it is to pull it out and put it back in. Explains that the not-starting could have been any number of things, like no gas or gas from last summer or a blocked fuel line, or a dead spark plug, or a whole lot of other, worse, things that she couldn't fix herself, and the only way to find out would be trial and error, starting with the cheapest and simplest option. Which is, he explains, the spark plug, assuming that you already know that there's gas in the tank.

"You're good at explaining," she says, feeling surprised and trying not to show it. She's been thinking all along that he might actually be Rocky in terms of intellectual abilities, but she's been wrong. His vocabulary is rudimentary, but lack of education is not the same as lack of brains. She's always known that. And a kid who got yanked out of school to move across the country and then had to spend a lot of time taking care of a parent probably didn't get the best out of his education.

"Well, you're like Brendan, you gotta have stuff explained to you." The words are complaining, but his tone isn't. "You really get each other. No wonder he thinks the sun shines outta your butt." And then his ears go hot red at the tips; she's seen it happen before but it's pretty obvious out in the sunlight. His face never flushes, but the ears do.

Between the sight of him shirtless and the feeling of his thumbs so gentle on her face and the utterly masculine smell of him, she's gone liquid on the inside. She needs to go inside, where the boys are, before she does something dumb. "You need some water?"

"Nah, I brought some," he says. "Listen – I wasn't trying to keep you from finding out how to do stuff, it's just... I used to like doing stuff for my mom, and I guess I sort of got in the habit of it. So, well, that's why."

"I understand," she says. He really is sweet underneath. "I understand now, I was just feeling sort of..."

"You're okay," he says again. "Everybody has bad days. Think I'm gonna go, Tess will have dinner ready soon."

"You sure? And can I pay you for the spark plug?"

"No charge, lady," he says, and ducks his head like he's made a little joke. "Besides, I don't have change for a dollar sixty-three."

"Okay. But you'll have to let me make you brownies again sometime," she says, and because she's looking right at him she sees his pupils dilate just a little, and her breath catches.

If she's honest with herself, watching Tommy Conlon eat even one bite of brownie is an exercise in sensual pleasure. The look on his face... and the way he licked a smear of chocolate from his top lip, _my God_... It might have been that, more than abs or tattoos or beautiful mouth or dancing, or even kindness, that burned itself into her brain and caused those oh-so-naughty dreams last night.

"Sometime," he says. At the gate he looks over his shoulder, and she waves, and then he's gone.

She's probably going to dream again tonight. _Damn damn damn_. The very last thing she needs is the hots for a guy like that one. Sweet, yeah. Sexy, hell yeah. But not all that stable. _Damn_.

O ) O ) O )

Jen, up earlier than usual, pops down to the basement laundry room to pick up a load of athletic stuff she put in the dryer before leaving for work last night. She'd been too tired to go get them when she'd come home, had gone straight to bed instead of unwinding for the two hours post-work it usually takes.

Now she just hopes that they actually got dry, because if they didn't get dry in one cycle they're going to smell sour, and she hates that. But the load is in her purple basket, neatly sorted and folded. Shorts on bottom, sports bras on top. And on top of the whole thing is a note:

_Needed another cycle to dry. Don't worry, I did it on low heat. You owe me a drink. Luv, Grey. _

Huh. Well, that was nice of him. She grabs the basket and takes it back upstairs, then knocks on the guys' door. It takes a few minutes, but soon enough Dagan's opening it in a pair of ancient running shorts and nothing else, his dark hair like a haystack.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you up," Jen says.

Dagan yawns. "No, it's okay, I had to get up to answer the door anyway."

"Grey's at work, right?" She knows he is; it's just past nine am and he has to be in at eight. "I just wanted to leave him a message."

"Oh. No prob. Just stick it on his door. I'm gonna go back to bed now, I was up all night writing code." Dagan works for a gaming company, writing code for videogames; he could probably afford much fancier living quarters, but doesn't seem to care.

"Uh, Dagan? Which one is his door?" But even as she's asking, she already knows. One bedroom door is open and she can see the covers turned back where Dagan got out of bed. The other two doors are closed, and Cole's small red running shoes are sitting outside one door with newspaper stuffed in them, presumably to dry them out after yesterday's rain. So the one in the middle must be Grey's.

"Middle," Dagan says, and yawns again. "Go ahead, stick it on the door. Or on the bed, he always goes in to change when he gets home."

So, given that limited permission, she opens the door and looks around. Jen, who lived first in a series of rented rooms with her crack-addicted mother, then in her grandmother's dark cramped house, and then in a dormitory at the city home, followed by a further series of foster homes, is an inveterate snooper-about in people's bedrooms. Sometimes if she goes home with a guy, she checks out his bedroom to decide whether she wants to sleep with him or not. So getting to see inside Grey's room is a bonus.

The bed's made, which she would have guessed anyway, but it's a twin bed, which is surprising. Predominating color is forest green in bedspread and curtains. Framed photos on desk and dresser and walls are of apparently family and various running team members. There's a photo of Grey on the dresser, in which he's hugging a tall, slender, greyhoundy-looking girl with long straight dark blonde hair and brown eyes, and he's looking at her with this goofy expression but she's looking out at the camera as if he doesn't exist.

Okay, so she's guessing from the neat-but-not-obsessively-so room that he's got an orderly mind but some creative ideas. Pays his bills on time. Wears size Large shirts and 33-inch waist jeans; likes gray socks instead of white. (Well, that one makes sense given his name.) Two of the books from Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series on the nightstand. Box of six condoms, two gone, in the top drawer of the nightstand. But no K-Y or Astroglide (which _doesn't_ make sense, because all the gay guys Jen knows go through lube like water through a sieve).

It is a damn shame Grey's not interested in girls. Judging by his room, his sense of humor, and his bra-folding skills, he'd make a great boyfriend.

She sighs. Flips his note over to write on it, "Accepted. Tks 4 folding so neatly. Bring this note to The Palomino when I'm working and I will get you the biggest Long Island Ice Tea we make, or anything else you want. Luv, Jen."


	20. Chapter 20: First Kiss

**Ch 20 First Kiss**

**A/N: Some war stuff in this one, based on an Army soldier's account of the Iraq war plus my own overactive imagination. Please be careful reading if you have violence triggers.**

He blames Brendan for making him get that cell phone. It's a cheap basic prepaid flip phone, nothing fancy at all, and mostly it had been for calling Pop on so he wouldn't have to borrow Brendan's phone for the long distance.

But last week at dinner, Brendan had been bugging him about it. "How's the new phone?"

Tommy had finished a bite and said, "It's a phone. It works."

"Yeah? Call me so I have your number." So Tommy had pulled the steel-gray phone out of his shorts pocket and dialed, and Brendan's iPhone – one of the few concessions he's made to having money these days – rang. "Okay, got it. You might as well do everybody's, you know."

"After I eat." He'd pretended not to see Tess smile, because he knows his appetite astounds her sometimes. But after he'd finished eating, he'd called everyone else whose phone numbers he knew (Pop, Pilar, Tess, Kelly, and Frank) and given them his number. He actually can't remember it himself, has to open the phone and look to see what the number is.

Kelly had laughed at the time, and said that if Tommy was going to show up and just mow her grass, at least he could call her and warn her. So he'd done that, called her one evening and said not to call the cops, he'd come over and mow her grass for her the next day.

And as a consequence, Tommy's not getting enough rest lately. He can barely drag himself out of bed at five. He hit the snooze button three times this morning, even knowing that that's counterproductive and you never sleep well for those extra nine (times three) minutes. While he's running, he's telling himself all the ways that this is stupid, that there's no point in staying up so late just to _talk_, because talking doesn't get anything done. Talk's just talk. Doesn't mean anything. Doesn't solve any problems.

Funny, you know, most of his pain recently has had to do with childhood, with Mom and Pop and Brendan, with bruises and shouting and abandonment. Not with the Corps, not with the war or losing the guys. That pain's still there. It's just maybe receded for awhile while he deals with this other shit. It will be back; the bad stuff always is.

So he's puzzled by the fact that he looks forward to late evenings so much. And if he doesn't talk to Kelly for a few minutes before they go to sleep, he feels that he's left something undone, which bugs him. It's not like they're even talking about anything significant, either. They tell each other stories. Childhood. Funny stuff. Stuff that happens during their respective days. They ask each other dumb questions, like: favorite food, ever? Worst day in middle school? And then they answer them. It's not like any of it would change the world.

But for some inexplicable reason, talking to Kelly about this stuff – like the birthday brownies his mom would make with extra chocolate chips, and the day in seventh grade he had three standardized tests after a night in which Pop had yelled so much he and Brendan were too scared to sleep, and they couldn't sneak out because their parents were in the living room just downstairs, and Mom was so sore in the morning she couldn't make any breakfast – he can feel it changing him. Maybe it's just that somebody cares enough to ask about the details. He's not sure. But he feels less alone. There's less of a need to be private, to protect everything that's on the inside. And he sleeps well afterwards, too.

Sometimes it makes him think of Manny on the other side of the tent, Skyping with Pilar, quiet chats during which they'd both laugh and then Pilar would get teary. Manny's voice would go sweet, and even though Tommy's Spanish is so limited he couldn't have followed the conversation even if he had been nosy enough to try, he could still tell that no matter what the words were, the meaning was love. And Manny would vacate the chair in front of the laptop looking peaceful, like he'd just had a fifteen-minute window into heaven, right there in the middle of the hell that is Iraq.

Oh, it's not that he _loves_ Kelly. Not that. He just... appreciates her. Because, c'mon, she doesn't need her life messed up with his shit. He's... being a friend. It's nice. That warm feeling in his chest when he talks to her, that's not love. He wouldn't know love from a hole in the ground anyway.

But he should be sleeping more. And training harder.

In the afternoon, Frank sets him to sparring with José, one of the retired fighters who works at the gym, and when he's gone seven rounds with José and worn him out, Frank himself gets in the ring with him. This time it's not Beethoven on the speakers, it's the 1812 Overture, some classical crap that Tommy actually likes for once. "You're not even out of breath," Frank notes, with something in his voice that might be approval.

"Nope." Training by Pop's rules will do that for you. Go until you can't go any more, and then go a little more. Run until you want to die, and then run half a block farther. Even just half a pushup more, when your arms feel like cooked spaghetti, counts. Some days he has a constant echo of Pop's voice in his head, _You got more in you!_

"You're a lot more relaxed in here these days," Frank says. "You can do defense as well as offense, and you can pretty much take anything I throw at you. You're not rushing anything now. You think so?"

He can tell that Frank would like him to say that it's Frank's training system teaching him to relax, and he doesn't want to let Frank down. Frank's a really good coach, and the way he integrates everything from nutrition to conditioning to techniques and mental control is, if Tommy's honest, pretty damn awesome. The relaxation, though? Tommy thinks that comes from getting to know his own strengths, working on his particular weaknesses as a fighter – he doesn't have many, and the ones he does have are related to his physical limitations, like the length of his arms determining his max striking distance – and feeling more like he belongs in the fight space, like the cage belongs to him.

Then, too, he's really getting comfortable with jiu-jitsu now, where before he was better with Muay Thai and boxing styles. But everything just sort of meshes together now, old wrestling moves flowing into jab and kick and fulcrum of balance. Like the way that baseball players say that when they're on a hitting streak, the ball is beach-ball-size and in slow motion as it comes toward them – it's like that, everything is _easy_ right now.

He says something like that to Frank, to the effect that Frank's pulled together a lot of elements for him and allowed him to get comfortable. They're doing that back-and-forth dance, jab-and-weave, punch-and-duck, listening to the music and following the rhythm and pace Frank set in the first ten seconds. When he first started working with Frank on these pacing exercises, it would often take him a good two minutes to settle to Frank's pace. Early on, he was always rushing things; now he's got a better sense of when to slow, when to push it, when to adapt the timing.

"And I think life is pretty good for you personally too right now," Frank adds. "What do you say?"

"It's not bad."

And Frank lets it drop, thank God. He always seems to just know when Tommy's reached the end of his patience with the wacky Zen stuff, or the personal questions. Who knows, maybe Tommy signals it like a semaphore: _Hands Off Now_.

They go three rounds for pace, and then Frank tells him to go run. "Short distance today," Frank says. "You're a beast lately, I'd better get Dr. Fowler to check your CK levels." Tommy can't keep straight all the stuff Frank's on-call gym doctor tests for, besides the usual drugs-you're-not-supposed-to-have, and he doesn't know what half of the tests are for. Nor does he really care. He's all-natural, no-additives these days – well, ever since he started training with Pop a couple of years ago, anyway. So he pees in the cup and lets a guy in a lab coat prick his finger for a blood sample a couple of times a month, no big deal, and so does Marco. They're both always clean.

Today he'll be home early, which is nice. Tess started keeping Jack and Martin last week when school let out, instead of Kelly's having to take them to daycare while she's working. Now that Tess has no summer college classes, she said she needed something to do, but she'd sort of winked at Brendan as she said it, and Tommy knows she's doing Kelly a favor by keeping the boys for a small fee. A little extra money for Tess, but a lot less out of pocket for Kelly, and the boys are having a fantastic time running around and going to the pool with Tess and the girls instead of being cooped up at daycare all day.

He is kind of digging it that Kelly's boys are at the house when he gets there; Rosie and Emily are awesome, but sometimes the tea parties and finger painting and dolls get a little too precious for him to participate in. With Jack and Martin there, the girls are much more likely to go outside and run around, let him turn them upside down, play wacky "pretend" games like Jack's favorite, Cops and Bad Guys. He's also kind of digging it that Kelly comes by to get the boys and sometimes stays for supper, which means more talking time.

It also means he talks more to Brendan and Tess, but that's not so weird now.

After dinner tonight, before Kelly heads home, they're hanging around in the living room watching some baseball and chatting. The kids are in and out, downstairs to catch a little Spongebob, then outside to swing awhile, then back in for water.

Brendan's apparently had recent conversation with Frank, and he's feeling chatty. "Hey," he says to Tommy, "Frank says you are tearin' up the gym these days. Says you are indefatigable."

"He says_ what_ now?" Tommy doesn't know that word.

"That he can't tire you out. In-de-fa-ti-gable. Same root word as fatigue."

"Oh, that. He's not tryin' hard enough," Tommy says, and puts his hands behind his head. Kicks back, puts his feet up on the coffee table, grins smugly at his big brother.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Brendan says, and shakes his head.

"Naw, I think Frank's still tryin' to turn my brain inside out," Tommy says. "Get me thinking different. You were probably better at that than I am."

Brendan looks at him a minute, eyebrows raised. "Truth? He says he still has no idea how I managed not to get killed by you in the first round, except that you maybe didn't want to kill me. Says you're way better than me."

Tommy looks Brendan in the eye, takes the acknowledgment as a gift. Gives it back. "No, things turned out the way they should've in the cage." And it's Brendan's turn to take the gift. His mouth doesn't move, but his eyes show it, and just for a second or two Tommy's five years old, following his big brother down the big elementary school hallway, a little scared but knowing he's gonna be okay because Brendan's there.

"You boys have epic battles when you were growing up?" Kelly asks

Brendan laughs. "Yes. _Epic_. After the time we managed to knock the dresser over, Mom kept sending us outside, or down to the basement, so we wouldn't wreck anything. Of course, then, it was just wrestling."

"Aw, c'mon, it was anything but epic," Tommy protests. "I kicked your ass every time."

"Oh, don't lie, you did _not_."

"Almost every time."

"Yeah, and if you lost you whined about it until I wrestled you again."

"Until I beat you again, you mean."

"You just hate to lose."

"Okay, that's _enough_, guys." Tess finally stops it by going over and sitting on Brendan's lap. To Kelly she says, "Brendan won't say, but in high school he didn't really get anywhere with it until he went down a weight class and didn't have to wrestle Tommy anymore."

"Traitor," Brendan mutters, half kidding, and leans in for a kiss.

"You got somewhere with _me_," she reminds him. "Cutest wrestler at Allderdice High. Cutest athlete, period." And they kiss again.

"Prettiest thing ever to wear a little short cheerleading skirt," he says to her, and kisses her one more time.

"Why am I not surprised you were a cheerleader, Tess?" Kelly says. "I can just see you now, shaking your pompoms."

"You weren't?" Tess says. "I thought you were too."

"Oh, no," Kelly says, looking scandalized. "Wild horses couldn't have dragged me to cheer tryouts, no _way_."

"What did you do? High school sports, I mean," Brendan wants to know, and Tommy turns to look at her too. He's seen that photo of her in costume, but what else?

"Swimming. At which I was no better than mediocre, and that only at a couple of strokes. I don't really have the body shape for it," Kelly explains, and Tommy remembers that the Olympic swimmers are all tall, with long arms and legs. "And I ran cross-country a couple of years, but I really sucked at that. I had a blast, and I still like to run, but I _sucked_."

"Bet you weren't really that bad," Tess says.

But Kelly shakes her head. "Nope. Sucked. Short legs." And she points at them.

(So of course Tommy looks at her legs, not that he hasn't before. They're good legs. Short, but toned. And she's got those cute red shoes on again, the ones that show off her toes.) "Hey, they're not_ that _short. They reach the floor, don't they?"

Kelly rolls her eyes. "Ah ha ha ha," she says, deadpan, then slugs him with a throw pillow. He laughs and grabs his own pillow, but she stops him with one pointed finger. "No. I'm not getting in any fights with _you_. Word is you're a beast and you never give up."

"True dat," Brendan says, and kisses Tess again. "So how bad did you tear up the Washington state mats, Tom?"

_Thank you, buzzkill._ Tommy shoots him a death glare, and then has to drop it when he realizes Brendan's serious. "You think I wrestled after I left? You _dumbass."_

"Why wouldn't you?" Tess asks. "You were really good."

He gives her a minute to think that through. "_Because_ I was good. And Mom was terrified of getting found." Tess blinks, and Brendan looks down. "And also because I had to get a job to help with the rent. I didn't hit a mat again until I took a Muay Thai class in the Corps." Brendan looks like he wants to say something, maybe like, _I'm sorry I ditched your ass, baby bro_, so he says, "Look, it's water under the bridge now. Let's be past it."

"I remember the first time I saw you wrestle," Tess says to Brendan, probably trying to get the conversation back on track. "And I said to myself, that is the hottest boy I have ever seen in a green-and-white singlet."

"_Ooh, _she called me hot," Brendan says, and they kiss again.

"Oh, go get a room," Tommy says, disgusted. Or at least he's pretending to be, it's actually kind of sweet.

The kids run through on their way upstairs, Jack saying something about Lincoln Logs. "Yeah, you are getting kinda sickening over there," Kelly says. "Ha. I bet y'all were each other's first kiss, too."

"Of course," Tess says, smiling like a goofball. There's the rattly crash of somebody pouring out the box of Lincoln Logs upstairs, and Kelly cringes a little.

"Um, no," Brendan says.

"What?" Tess demands. "I wasn't the first girl you ever kissed?" He shakes his head. "Well, I was the first girl you French-kissed, right?"

He shakes his head again. "Nope. Carolyn Hillhouse."

"What?" Tommy demands. "When?"

"At Terrence Mahon's birthday party in 8th grade. We were playing Spin the Bottle. Why?"

"Cause ol' Brick House was my first kiss, too." It is kinda funny.

"No way."

"Yep. She sort of grabbed me under the bleachers at a basketball game when I was a freshman. She tasted like orange soda," Tommy remembers. "I was fascinated. Followed her around for a couple of weeks, but by that time she wasn't interested in me at all."

"Gross, Carolyn," Tess says. "I never liked her." Kelly, who's giggling into the throw pillow, hasn't told hers yet. "Kelly, you remember yours?"

"Sure I do. Want to guess how old I was?"

"You were... hmm. I know, you were eighteen and it was the first week you were away from home long enough to get out from under your stepfather's thumb," Tess says.

"Wrong answer," Kelly says. "No, it was the summer when Fred moved us all to Boone, North Carolina, for three months before he gave up on getting a job there and moved us to Wilkes-Barre."

"I thought you moved when you were twelve," Brendan says.

"Bingo. This boy was _really_ cute. They lived down the block, and he sort of cornered me up against the wall of the church after Vacation Bible School one day, and I let him, and he sort of stuck his tongue down my throat, and I let him."

_Great. Now he's got mental images of sticking his tongue down Kelly's throat, which naturally leads to mental images of sticking other things into Kelly elsewhere. Dammit. Good thing he's got a throw pillow to hold on his lap._

"Yuck," Tess says, making a face.

"By my experience, all middle-school boys kiss like that," Kelly says. "Anyway, I liked it."

"He really must have been cute," Tess says.

"Very cute. His name was Tony Faw."

And the world, the conversation, his boner, all grind to a hideous halt for Tommy. He knows that name._"Who?" _

"Tony Faw," she says. "You know him?"

"Lance Corporal Tony Faw," he says, feeling his vision go dark at the edges. "In my platoon."

"Tommy," Brendan says. "Kelly, stop."

"Could be. Of course I haven't seen him for ages, but he was kind of tall, dark hair, dark dark eyes. Part Cherokee Indian." _Shit. Fucking hell, it really is the same guy._ "I was actually better friends with his sister – "

"Keri." Tommy knows her too. Probably too well. "K-e-r-i. She had long straight dark hair."

"She did when I knew her too. So you know Tony? That's awesome, how's he doing?" He can't answer right away, because suddenly the living room is gone and he's surrounded by dirt walls and that powdery cream-colored sand, stained red in too many places, and all around there are dead Marines, dead brothers on the ground, and he keeps running from one to another looking for someone still breathing, all dead, this one's dead too, he can't help _he can't help them_, and here's a brother with no head, casings all over,_shit,_ who is it, there's too much blood to read the name tape, but there's a tat right there on his forearm, one he knows... _fuck_, it's Faw.

Out of nowhere he hears himself say, "Last time I saw Tony Faw he was missing his head." And he has to be somewhere else, _right fucking now_, or he's going to lose his own head, brains turned to scrambled egg. He's up and off the couch, through the house, out the back door, in a flash.

He doesn't know what he's going to do in the yard, except go up to the treehouse and hope the kids aren't in it, because he needs to be alone. There's too much in his head to even go running, because he's not absolutely sure he might not be running over dead people.

But the treehouse is quiet, and he just sits there in it, back up against the wall for security, arms around his knees and his eyes closed so he can see them from his vantage point at rear sweep. _Fleischman up front – glad he got the promotion, he deserves it, just needs a little experience. Faw on the west point, Alvarez on the east. Everybody else spread out, with that little shit Taylor hemmed in so he can't get into trouble again. Torres won't do anything stupid again, he was just scared out of his wits, but Lewis bears watching. Lewis is always pissed off about something, wouldn't take much to set him off. Manny just over to my left a little piece, backing me up without having to be at my back, good man. I hate these little militant towns, full of people who hate us, they're like anthills full of ants and they'll all come boiling up out of the buildings if we're not careful. I'll be glad when this damn patrol is over and I can get a shower, I probably smell like a bear. Watch that wall, McLeod. And that taller house over there, for snipers._

_Planes coming toward us overhead, thank God we've got air control or this whole fucking place would be even more of a hellhole than it is. Holy shit, what's that – goddammit, it's a fucking bomb raid. You idiots, can't you see we're down here too? Flags out and wave 'em, hurry, get under cover if you can OH SHIT._

_And then the hell. Exactly like being in hell, what with explosions and fires and screaming, shit blowing up right and left, where's Manny, where's Fleischman, pieces of buildings falling, damn that really hurt, bet my helmet's dented and I could swear that was Manny's voice screaming, stop the fucking bombs YOU FUCKING IDIOTS, we're Americans, are you fucking BLIND?_

_And then it's over. No more bombs, and the planes are gone, screaming away like everybody screaming down here on the ground, who's alive? Start with Manny because I know where he was, but he's not there now, there's a piece of wall, move it off, nothing there, Manny where the fuck are you? There's Taylor. Taylor, knock it off, quit playing dead with not a scratch on you, you little shit, except your eyes are open and grit all over them FUCK. Who else who else, I still hear screaming don't stop, I gotta find you, who's this under – that's Faw. That's Faw, I know that tattoo, goddammit, where's his head, and did I just kick a rock or, that's not a rock I gotta puke and my head's killing me, where the fucking fuck-hell is Manny?_

Then something makes him jump, makes the scene in front of him waver and start to dissolve, like smoke, or that damn desert dust blowing away. Something on his shoulders. He blinks, shakes his head. Closes his eyes tight, and when he opens them it's green and gray-brown, leaves and tree limbs. Not cream-tan and red and hell.

"That's it, breathe." There's something warm wrapped around him, a soft heavy green thing, _that's Emily's favorite plushy blanket_, and a hand rubbing the back of his neck, slow and firm. "Breathe. Give me your hands." He can follow orders, that's easy. He takes a deep breath, and there's no cordite, no burning bodies smell, no blood. Unclenches his fists, and lets somebody take them. The somebody's hands are small and very warm, _those are Kelly's hands,_ and she circles one of his wrists with her fingers for a minute, and then she takes that hand back again. "Good. Your heart rate's getting back to normal. Breathe again." He takes another good deep breath, getting the good outdoors smell of leaves and dirt, and Kelly's perfume. "You feel like throwing up?" He shakes his head. "Good. I sometimes do. It's no fun." He leans his head back and breathes deeply again. Finally he can turn his head to look at her for just a minute.

She looks calm. "You back?" When he nods, she says, "Thank you for joining us on this summer evening in _lovely _Philadelphia," like a deranged talk-show host, and he smiles a little. "You need tea," she says, and takes her hands away to pour something out of a Thermos into a cup, he can hear it splashing in. She hands it to him, and it's very warm too, nice and comforting. "Honey and lemon in it. Don't complain about the honey, it's not much and you need it."

"Okay." It does taste good, and feels warm going down. He's suddenly a lot thirstier than he'd realized, so he drinks it all and lets her pour some more.

"Good job." She hands him the cup again.

"You hauled all this shit up here?"

"You are not the only tough one, John Wayne," she says. _John Wayne_, she's always calling him that, kind of joking but kind of not, either. He thinks he likes it. "I know you already know, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry I brought him up, and I'm sorry it ended that fun conversation. I'm sorry you've been through so much hell, and I'm really sorry about Tony because I liked him."

"I did too," he says, surprised that he feels like saying that much. More, maybe. "Especially after we tried to bash each other's skulls in."

"Why'd you do that?" Kelly asks.

"Cause I slept with his sister."

"Okay, not sure I needed that piece of information," Kelly says, but he tells her anyway. He doesn't know how Tony, an East Coaster, wound up in San Diego, except maybe for some special training, and Tony had been cocky as all hell because he had mad tracking skills – a lot of those Southern boys did, spending all that time out in the woods hunting. And one Saturday night at The Salty Dog there was this pretty girl, nearly as tall as Tommy and this long black hair down her back, dancing like a crazy woman, and he'd gone over to talk to her. Her name was Keri, she was visiting her brother, and she was looking for a good time, so he'd shown her one. She hadn't left his base apartment (he'd been sharing a two-bedroom with another single guy at the time) until morning, and Sunday afternoon he'd been out walking when he ran into Faw and some other guys in that special training program, and out of the blue Faw had just decked him. So he'd punched back, gotten Faw down on the ground and hit him twice, and then gotten back up, leaving the guy sitting there rubbing his jaw. And only then had he found out what it was all about. It had taken several brother-sister phone calls and some explaining to get Faw to stop bitching about it, but eventually they'd settled into a friendship. It had been easier once Keri had gotten engaged to some guy back home.

"Oh, but he was so mad at me for a couple of weeks," Tommy remembers.

"You get into trouble over that?" Kelly wants to know.

"No. Probably should have, but nobody official saw it and nobody wanted to report anybody, so... we were okay." He's quiet a minute. "She was really proud of him." He thinks of something else that's been bugging the hell out of him for a long time. "It's my fault Fleischman's dead, though."

"How's that?" she asks, and pours the last of the tea into this cup.

"Cause not twenty minutes before we'd switched spots. He took point, and I took sweep. See, he'd just made Staffie and I knew they'd reassign him soon, and we both thought it would be good if he got some more experience leading patrols." She doesn't say anything. "He might have been the first one down. I'm not sure, it was pretty much chaos." He gets another deep breath and squeezes the warm cup a little tighter, wanting to stay here in the treehouse instead of going back there. "He was older than me – five, six years maybe. And he had a wife and a kid. Beautiful girl, long red hair the color of copper, and his kid was a redhead too, a real pistol. Played chess. He was only five. Be eight now, I guess, same age as Jack and Em."

He drinks the last of the tea. "I should do something for Mrs. Fleischman. I just... I didn't want to tell her it was my fault."

"You already know it's not," Kelly says quietly. "You know there's no guarantee that even if he'd been where you were he'd have survived. There's no guarantee that one person out of all of you would have lived and it would have been him. Did you get hurt?"

"I think something fell on me, maybe a piece of wall or something. My helmet was dented. Burned hands. Nothing serious."

"What _is_ it with you and the dented helmets?" Kelly says, mock-exasperated. "'Nothing serious,' my foot. Thank_ God_ for those helmets, you need your head in one piece."

"That's not the point," he says. "Point is, it shouldn't have been me who lived. It should have been Manny. Or Fleischman. They had families. Nobody needed me, not anymore, not since Mom died. It shouldn't have been me." Kelly bites her lip. "Or I should have died with them. I remember them every day," he tells her. "It's all I can do, I can't do anything else. I can't even take care of Manny's family, and I _promised_ to do that. I send Pilar something when I can, but I just... I'm not him. I shouldn't have been the one. It should have been anybody except me."

Kelly reaches over and takes the empty cup and sets it down. She takes his hands again. "I don't know why it happened like that," she says softly. "But I think you're right, I think all you can do is remember them and try to do something good with your life."

So he tells her about Major Abramson's idea about devoting his brig sentence to the guys. How he'd thought of one of them every new day in depth, and every one of them every day. Even that little shit Taylor would have shaped up eventually, and it almost didn't matter, because no matter what, he'd been a brother.

"You want to keep doing that?" she asks.

"No. It seems dumb now. I mean, with what I'm doing now."

"Okay. But listen, Tommy, I really think you need to talk to somebody about it. A counselor."

He shrugs. Except for Abramson, they all seem full of shit. "Can I talk to you some, or does it freak you out? I know you have your own stuff to deal with."

She's quiet a minute. "This doesn't really get into my issues. I think it's okay. I mean, I spent enough years as an ER nurse that I've seen my share of bodies in bad shape, mangled or dead."

"And your dad," he remembers. Thinks of the night he met her, when she'd been talking about the dead miners laid in a row outside the collapsed mine, all burned so badly they didn't look human.

"Yes." She's quiet again, and then she says. "Yeah, I think it's okay. I'll tell you if I can't handle something."

"Thank you," he says, and he's right back where he was earlier in the living room, thinking about kissing her. Touching her. Jesus, does his junk _ever_ calm the hell down? He squeezes her hands and lets go, and suddenly, without his having planned it, he's got his arms around her. Gently and from a distance, but his face is near her ear and he can really smell her perfume in this spot, and then she turns a little and hugs him back. They stay like that for a minute or two, and then she pulls back and he lets her.

"I gotta get the kids home," she says. "You can call me later if you want. If things get bad, middle of the night is okay."

He nods. She starts to go down the ladder. "I've been thinking," he says, surprising himself again. "Tony Faw? Maybe he was lucky."

She turns back around. "You can't think like that. You have family too, you know."

"No. I mean... well, at least he got to kiss you. That's a pretty good life. I think." And she gives him that really warm sweet smile of hers, and then she's down the ladder and into the house, and eventually he can go in and tell Brendan, yeah, he's okay.

_A/N: Betcha thought this was going to be actual kisses, from the chapter title! But no. However, there __**will **__be kissing. Sometime. Soon. And not just between Brendan and Tess, although those two grab smooches every chance they get. No, Some Lucky Woman is going to get kissed by those exquisite lips we love to dream about. MMMMM._

_Meanwhile, poor Tommy's Dealing With More Crap. **Again. **The fact that he's having the occasional flashback actually is pretty hopeful – means he's dealing with stuff instead of cramming it down and letting it just bubble away like acid inside._

_Man, I write long chapters. BTW, it might be awhile before we hear from Jen again, but she's not dead. Just think of her working her butt off at the gym every day._


	21. Chap 21: Sunday at the Star City Grille

**Ch 21: Sunday at the Star City Grille**

**A/N: Okay. Some fluff here. Little bit of "Are You There, God? It's Me, Tommy" stuff going on in this one, but just a little. Skip it if it bugs you. **

It goes on every night. Every night about the time that Kelly's got everything taken care of – doors locked, dishwasher running, counters and stove wiped off, dirty laundry in the basement and sorted into the plastic bins, clean scrubs laid out for the morning – her cell phone will ping with a message like _Hey whats up_. And she'll text back something like _The ceiling? _And then he'll call.

"You got time to talk?" he'll ask, and of course she does because she's been looking forward to it all day. It's embarrassing how much she likes it, especially because she should just be enjoying talking to Tess, which she's also doing, but not at night anymore. She said something to Tess like, of course Tess wants to spend time with Brendan at night, and maybe it would be better if they chatted in the evenings, when Kelly comes to pick up the boys. Or during lunch – sometimes Tess will bring all the kids to the park near the orthopedists' office and they'll eat sandwiches on the picnic bench and then she and Tess talk while the kids play on the playground.

It's odd. She hasn't even been able to bring herself to mention to Tess that she talks to Tommy at night. Even though she knows Tess worries about him, even though she knows Tess thinks he's too closed in on himself and too silent, she just... can't. Because then Tess would see her face and know that something is going on in Kelly's head. And it's too delicate. Tess would say something, and that would ruin it, make him self-conscious and as silent with Kelly as he is with Tess.

She gets the feeling that he hasn't really had anyone to talk to for ages. Years maybe. He's still so awkward. It reminds her of her middle school crushes, talking to them on the phone (when her stepfather Fred wasn't around to hear, and to suggest that Kelly would be the same kind of dirty little slut as her sister Susan, which is probably exactly the reason Kelly had been a virgin when she'd gotten married). Those boys, they'd change the subject without a segue, say the same things twice, ask the same questions three times. Okay, he's not _that _bad, but he's awkward with the social stuff.

He's still awkward with the social stuff in person, too. At Emily's birthday party a few weeks ago, he'd hung out with the kids instead of joining the other adults who'd chosen to stay and have cake and punch and watch the kids play games. She'd seen him actually dodge one of Tess' yoga friends by offering a double-decker piggyback ride to two giggling little girls (one on his shoulders, and one on his back).

But get him really talking, telling stories, and he settles down. He can express himself vividly and succinctly. Sometimes she'll ask a question about his past and he'll brush it off, move on to something completely different, and she knows that subject's off limits, at least for the moment. But sometimes he'll answer, and the stories are incredibly immediate, like she's there in the middle of them. She knows, now, what it was like to drive away watching your big brother standing alone on the street in front of your house, not expecting to ever see him again. What it was like to find a friend and brother when you thought you'd lost yours forever, and to feel wanted – not just by your friend but by his wife and his children. What it was like to live in a tent in the desert, every moment taken up with one of two things: regimented boredom, or fear. What it's like to stand in the cage with somebody who could half kill you without blinking, ready to test your own resolve.

That last one had been hard to listen to. She'd bitten her fingernails all the way through it, and it was only when he'd noticed her silence that he'd said, "This is getting into your shit, isn't it?" and she'd said, _Yeah, kinda_. So he'd stopped.

"No, go on," she'd said, thinking, _I still have two nails I haven't mangled yet_.

"No, it's okay. I was pretty much done," he'd said. And then a pause, and, "Sorry." And then he'd asked her about how hard it was to have a new stepfather in charge of her life, so she'd told him about it.

How lonely she'd been with only Noah for company. Because their sister Susan, then 16, had just gotten married to Scotty Brown because she was pregnant. Fred had said all kinds of rotten things about teenage girls who went off and got themselves pregnant, and how most of them were on drugs and/or stupid. Kelly knew, though: Susan had just been so sad about Daddy that she didn't care about her reputation or her personal health, and that baby in Susan's belly was a sign of how sad Susan was, how much she just wanted to be loved. Mama had simply cried every time she looked at Susan, and followed that up with comments to Kelly about a woman needing a man to take care of things for her, how a woman alone was prey for the taking, and that she knew Fred wasn't like JT, but Fred was there and alive and he wanted to take care of Mama, and Kelly's daddy had been "a man in a million," didn't nobody ever love Mama like he had and she'd never find another one like him, so there wasn't any difference between Fred and any other man on the face of the earth, because none of them was JT.

And right then she'd started to cry, telling this to Tommy now, because Mama was just a shell of who she'd been before. Twenty years on and Mama had never gotten over losing Daddy. She kept Fred happy and she loved her grandchildren, but it seemed like nothing really mattered to her anymore. Fred could yell all he wanted to, or call her a stupid bitch, or not give her enough money for the groceries, and Mama would just placate him, talk him down, but would she leave him? No. It was a woman's job to keep peace in the household, and a woman's job to support her man, and it was her God-given duty to uphold her marriage.

"This is making more sense," Tommy had said. "Why you put up with that shit for even half a day, I mean. When you are a sensible person and you know you don't deserve it."

Kelly had sighed and told him that even now, she could call her mother and her mother would say something like, "That was a good man and you let him go," or "Faithful wives don't get divorced."

"She loves me," she had told Tommy. "She just has this weird blind spot. And God knows where she got that, but maybe it's generational. I mean, I still feel guilty for not taking Mike back after the alcohol and the hitting and the other girls, but I know that's irrational."

"Mom was the same way," he'd said. "She felt she'd taken a vow just like the nuns do, and she couldn't break it. That's why we left instead of going to court."

"Ah."

"I'm glad you got out," he'd said, and she'd agreed, and then they'd suddenly both yawned and said they needed to get off the phone and go to sleep. And she'd felt both understood and horribly, horribly sad.

O : O : O :

Sunday morning, Kelly's up by quarter to eight, showered and dressed casually by ten after – gray athletic shorts and a dark blue Penn State Concert Choir tee, just for cooking breakfast in so she won't get anything on her good clothes. She puts a little gel in her wet hair to keep the curls under control, and steps out onto the porch for the newspaper. She's not all that surprised to see Tommy, lounging on the porch steps and holding another one of those delightful bags from Magruder's.

"Hi. Is this going to be a regular thing, you stopping by with sinful food on Sundays?" Kelly doesn't mind a bit of sinful food every now and then, but there's something sort of incredibly decadent about Tommy offering it to her. Probably because she's continuing to have these ridiculous semi-dreams, semi-fantasies about him.

He grins, looking away from her. It's honestly one of the most charming things he does – he's shy, actually _shy_ sometimes, and it makes her want to hug him like she would Martin. And he's got such a great smile, too. And then he looks back at her. "Not if you're that worried about your sugar intake."

"I'm not. Should I be?"

"Nah, once a week isn't going to make a difference." He swings the bag a little, like he's tempting her with it, apparently completely unaware that the most tempting thing on her porch does _not _fit in a Magruder's bag. "Almond bear claw in here for you."

That's her absolute favorite. "Aarrggh. You know, you could be arrested for getting people addicted to pastry," she teases, just to see him grin again, and he does.

"Only if you turn me in," he teases back.

"Come in and have some coffee," she says, and holds her hands out to help him up. Not that he needs help in the least, it's just that she's used to helping the boys up, and (_okay, admit it_) she likes touching him. She bends to grab the newspaper on the way inside, and holds the door open for him.

"You make good coffee," he says, following her into the kitchen.

"Thanks." She primes the coffeemaker with Italian Roast beans (Target's house brand is pretty good), hits the built-in grinder button, adds water, and touches START. This fancy thing was one of Mike's too-little-too-late apology presents, and she's not sorry she kept it. It does make good coffee. "I think I'm going to do scrambled eggs with ham and mushrooms today. Martin will complain about the mushrooms, but he's going to have to learn to eat stuff sooner or later."

"I guess," he says.

"I mean, it's weird – Jack eats pretty much anything except lima beans and liver, and Martin is the pickiest child on the planet. It's not like I fed them differently when they were babies, either."

She happens to be turned toward him, pulling coffee mugs out of the cabinet, when she says this, and catches some odd expression darting across his face, like a fish through shallow water, there and then gone. "What?" He shakes his head, looking blank. Which is how she knows that whatever it was, it was _something_ and not _nothing_. But she's got no idea what. Doesn't matter.

She preheats the pan with a tablespoon of real butter for the pound of sliced mushrooms. Gets out the bowl of strawberries she washed and hulled yesterday. "Hey, put that on the table for me, please?"

"Sure." He's back in just a few seconds. "Anything else I can do?"

"Um... yeah. I want Jack to set the table because he's learning to do it right, but I need the plates and glasses out. You want orange juice or anything besides coffee?" She tips half the mushrooms into the saute pan and stirs them around.

"Juice would be good, sure. I can pour it."

"Okay. Juice in the fridge, glasses in the cabinet next to the sink. And thank you." Out of the corner of her eye she watches him moving around her kitchen, just to watch him do anything, because she is a terrible objectifier of beautiful men. She feels slightly guilty about it, but not guilty enough to stop doing it. _Sigh_. She chops ham for the omelet and gets out the shredded sharp cheddar. When the mushrooms have shrunk a bit she adds the rest of the raw ones to the pan and stirs them all together.

"Those smell really good," he says, looking over her shoulder. There's a commotion upstairs, and she thinks she hears Martin's skittery feet in the hall.

"I know," she agrees with enthusiasm. "I love mushrooms." Yes, that's definitely Martin coming out of the bathroom, because he slams his door, and then Jack's voice upstairs complaining about the door slamming. "Hang on a sec," she says, and goes to the bottom of the stairs. "Breakfast, boys. Come on down." Back in the kitchen, she sautees the mushrooms a few moments longer, then dumps them out into a glass bowl.

"So, um... so how do you do this?" Tommy asks her, pointing to the saute pan.

"Make omelets? It's easy. This pan can only do about five eggs at a time, so I'll have to do two omelets – do you want to do the second one after you watch me do the first one? You seem like a hands-on kinda guy, I bet you pick it up quick."

"Okay," he says. So she shows him how to get all the filling ready, beat the eggs, use a bit more butter and spread it around, lift the cooking eggs and let the uncooked bit flow underneath, and then when it's almost done, how to add the filling and seasoning, flip the top over, and slide the omelet out.

"Trickiest bit is really flipping over the top, but it's not that bad. Now. Let's beat up these other eggs, and it'll be your turn. Here's the spatula, let's stick a little more butter in there, and then you go." He actually does pretty well – the omelet breaks some because he hasn't developed a deft touch with the spatula yet, but it's not a complete mess and it's certainly edible. "That was actually a very decent first attempt. Better than mine, to be honest." She gives him a solitary round of applause, just to watch him grin sideways again.

And then the boys come racing in, excited about doughnuts, and open the Magruder's bag, practically drooling over those chocolate-chocolate chip muffins again. She splits the first omelet three ways, for herself and Jack and Martin, and hands the second whole omelet to Tommy. "There. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. And can't you have a muffin or something?"

"Yeah, actually, I got that low-sugar apple-bran one for me," he says. "Frank says I need to be eating more carbs. But not more sugar." She nods. She's been worried about his almost carb-less meals.

Over breakfast she again asks Tommy if he wants to come to church with them – no pressure, it's okay if he doesn't want to. She's both surprised and not when he says _sure_: surprised because he had such a disdainful look on his face the last time she mentioned it, and not surprised because he's dressed a little nicer than he usually is. Jeans and a dark gray short sleeve polo shirt aren't really fancy, except when you spend your days in trackies and muscle shirts, and he looks good in the gray, he really does. She'd been planning to wear jeans herself today, but now she's thinking maybe her cotton paisley skirt in turquoise and periwinkle and aqua, and that turquoise scoopneck tee with her flat silver sandals.

O : O : O :

So she disappears upstairs in tee and shorts and comes back down in a skirt, looking pretty as a tropical beach, and he's glad he put on a nice shirt for once. And here are Jack and Martin, in polo shirts and khakis, and Martin for one seems happy Tommy's going with them, because he sort of launches himself onto Tommy from several stairs up, begging for a piggyback ride.

Kelly's church meets in what used to be a furniture store, which is pretty freaky in itself. It still seems like fake-church to him, anyway, because nothing looks right inside, it's just folding chairs and a lectern up front with a microphone, and they've got a band, guitars and keyboards and drums and everything.

They drop the boys off at a room near the front that has several kids in it, and they're playing some sort of game that looks like hopscotch, and laughing, and Martin grabs Jack's hand and pulls him right in without even a backward "Bye, Mommy," which is a surprise. Kelly points toward a row that looks to have some empty seats and they start walking there when she's stopped by this hefty bald guy in his mid-30s, maybe, with a goatee and a couple of tats on his left arm. He looks a like a biker, so Tommy is surprised when the guy says his name's Dave and he's the pastor there.

Kelly introduces him as her friend Tommy Conlon, and Dave offers his hand. "Hey, glad you're here." He asks Tommy where he's from, and Tommy can see the guy making connections like he knows who Tommy is, but he doesn't say anything except "Welcome," and "We're pretty relaxed around here, but we just want to love on people a little bit and pass Jesus' love on to them," which might sound stupid but Dave's like Brendan, he can say stupid stuff without sounding brain-dead.

And then Dave turns to greet a younger woman carrying a baby. Kisses the baby's cheek and then the woman's lips, and Kelly whispers to him, "That's his _wife,_ don't look so worried."

So he has to tell her, "Look, I'm freaked that he has a wife. That's just weird," and she laughs.

The music starts about two minutes after they walk in the door, indie-rock-sounding stuff with lyrics about praise and God and joy, and it's weird but easy to listen to. The music at Sacred Heart in Pittsburgh had been organ and choirboys; music at Holy Rosary in Tacoma was dudes in Jesus sandals with acoustic guitars, and neither one had been anything that engaged him. He finds himself moving his head a little, and Kelly looks at him. Says, "I warn you: _I sing_. You get embarrassed, just pretend you don't know me."

She's got a really nice voice. Not opera, and not some Mariah Carey pop diva kind of voice, but nice. And she clearly loves to sing, which he already knew because she always sings during Dance Time, but it's fun to watch her get lost in the music.

He zones out some during the homily, which they call the sermon, because it's so unfamiliar and he's still thinking too much about Mom, but every now and then he catches something Dave is saying. Like when Dave says, "If you are expecting God to do what you want just because you followed the rules, just because you asked him to, you are going to be in for a big disappointment. Because God is not this cosmic vending machine that – hey, you pop a couple of prayers in the slot and push the button, and you get what you wanted? Wrong. God has his own plan, his own will, and you will never get anywhere expecting him to be on _your_ schedule or agree on _your_ agenda."

So then Tommy winds up thinking about Mom even more, how she kept praying _Jesus, save me_, and Mom was a good person, but Jesus didn't save her. She died. And that priest, no, _pastor_, he didn't talk about why Jesus wouldn't save a good person who believed in him, so Tommy still doesn't get it. He's lost in this thought loop until the fresh air hits him, and he realizes that he's standing on the sidewalk and Jack is jumping from crack to crack in front of him.

They're walking out into the tiny parking lot when Kelly says, "Hey, let's go get some lunch." And despite this being his one day a week off from heavy-duty workouts, he's starving as usual, so he says sure.

"Star City Grille, Mom, please? _Pleeeease_?" It's so unlike Jack to beg for anything that Tommy turns to look at Jack, who's gone pink in the cheeks and is now skipping next to his mother.

"It will have to count as one of the two eating-out times this month," Kelly says calmly. "Martin, what do you say?"

"Do they have hot dogs?" Martin asks.

"Yes, dummy," Jack answers, and Kelly rolls her eyes before reminding Jack that name-calling is going to get him in serious trouble, and this is his last warning. Martin, oblivious to the "dummy" crack for once, says he wants a hot dog and fries.

"Star City it is, then," Kelly agrees. "But you're both eating vegetables for lunch too, so don't argue when we get there."

"So where is this place?" Tommy asks her as they're getting into the car. The day has already been full of new things and although he's not averse to more new things, he'd like to be prepared for them.

"It's downtown. We used to go there sometimes when the kids were younger," Kelly says, and he realizes she means "we" in terms of the family, herself and Mike and the boys. Which is a little weird, but she seems determined to make new memories with the way her family is now, and who is he to get in the way of that? "It's kind of a cross between a diner, a bar, and a family restaurant. They have good burgers, they have really excellent beer on tap, and they have classic homestyle food too."

"Sounds good."

"So, what did you think?" she asks. "About the service."

He's honest about it. "Weird. Interesting, though. That Dave guy believes what he's saying, anyway. And the music was good." She just nods, and pays attention to where she's going because downtown is a pain to drive in.

Star City Grille is located on a downtown block with a couple of old Protestant churches and old warehouse/retail space, as well as a couple of bars. Brick facade inside and out; the sign out front is old-fashioned neon, and the brick walls inside sport several small neon signs as well – for H&C coffee, Dr. Pepper, RC Cola, and Michelob, and one, inexplicably, for N&W Railway Roanoke Shops. The bar area is dark wood with patron stools, and all the tables are Formica, like old-school diners. There are booths along the wall and tables in the middle of the room, and there's a jukebox in the corner. It's kind of funky and kind of cheesy, but Tommy likes the feeling of the place.

They get seated at a table in the middle of the room, because the restaurant is beginning to fill up with the lunch crowd. Jack tells the waitress he wants a kid size burger, but can he have jalapenos and mayonnaise on it please? And milk and fries and green beans. Kelly orders a kid plate with hot dog, fries and green beans, as well as milk, for Martin, and for herself a Caesar salad with chicken, and iced tea.

Tommy orders the same thing as Kelly, but with two full chicken breasts and a baked potato on the side. Seems like if he's not working out, he's eating something. Even has to have another protein shake before going to bed, just so he won't wake up in the middle of the night starving. This whole training thing is such a pain in the ass, and at the same time, what else would he be doing?

"Dude," he says to Jack when the waitress has taken their order, "you eat jalapenos?"

"I love jalapenos," Jack says, perfectly composed. Sometimes the kid seems like a very small adult, he's so well-spoken. And sometimes, like when he picks on his brother, he seems like a normal eight-year-old. You can never tell. Martin, in contrast, always seems like a borderline-hyperactive five-year-old. "They're like a roller coaster for your mouth."

"You like roller coasters too?"

"I've only been on a couple," Jack says. "But they're fun. You think you're going to fall, but you don't. I think they tear them down if people fall. So they have to be safe."

"Right," he says to Jack, and catches Kelly's eye. They don't quite laugh. So then Tommy embarks on the topic of Roller Coasters I Have Loved, because he does love them, and Kelly tells about the ones she's ridden, and that keeps them going until their food arrives.

And then they're just eating. He thinks Kelly's trying to continue their conversation, but he's too busy eating to answer right away, and then she just shakes her head and laughs, and goes back to her salad. He's the last to finish, as usual, and by then Jack is talking to his mom, very seriously, about the possibility of going somewhere he can ride more roller coasters. And Martin's plate is so covered in smears of ketchup that it looks really gory.

Martin himself has smears of ketchup on his shirt, and he starts to get up out of his chair without asking. "Hey," Tommy says, "hey, c'mere a minute. Let's clean you up." And he wets a napkin in his water glass and wipes the worst of the ketchup smears off Martin's shirt. Then Martin, without asking (duh, when does he ever?), climbs up on Tommy's lap and lets his head fall back on Tommy's shoulder, and without even meaning to Tommy puts his arms around the little boy so he doesn't fall.

At that point, an older couple stops by their table. They're dressed like they've been to church too, and the lady says, "Excuse us, please. We just wanted to tell you how much we appreciated your children's excellent behavior during lunch, and we wanted to congratulate you on your lovely family."

Kelly looks up and catches his eye, and the weirdest thing happens: he _feels _like part of the family. Like this is some kind of alternate universe, in which he's been married to her all along, and these are his kids, and they all belong together. It's so sweet, and so fucking scary, that his eyes start to sting.

He and Kelly are still looking at each other, and this jolt of aching need shoots straight through his gut, _please let it be true_, all the blood rushing to his ears. Then she smiles at him, her sweet warm smile, and turns that smile to the older couple and says simply, "Thank you."

He repeats the thank you, feeling something in his chest that he couldn't even name even if he dared to, and the woman pats him on the shoulder and says, "You must be very proud." He just nods, not able to talk, and holds Martin a little tighter. Kelly turns back to him, and although her lips are still smiling there's something hot in her eyes, something that's answering him, like, _let's let it be true_, and her cheeks flush, and he's wishing very hard that fairytales came true, that she was really his wife, and that they could leave this place and go home, and it would be his home, and her bed would be his bed, and they could get into it and do stuff that might make more babies, and it would all be so very true...

And then Martin squirms to get down, and the waitress brings the check, and while Kelly takes the boys to the restroom he pays for lunch (he's got some cash in the bank, thanks to a residual check that came from Punchtown last week). Leaves the waitress a nice tip, because waitresses work hard, and is waiting for them when they come out. "Ready to go?" he asks, and Kelly starts to say something about the bill, and he just shakes his head. "No, I got this one," he tells her. She opens her mouth, stops, and thanks him.

All the way back to Marshall St., he's thinking and thinking, about everything: God as a vending machine. Mom. Mom's rosary, which he has stashed away at the bottom of his footlocker. The good feeling in Kelly's house, and the way he's starting to be comfortable there. The pretty shape of her mouth and her breasts and the way she laughs so hard, not caring what she looks like, when she's happy. The sound of her voice at night. The way he feels when he looks into those clear eyes of hers. And all the way back, he's getting more and more unsettled, like if he doesn't go back where he belongs – the gym, maybe, or maybe even Pittsburgh – he's going to get lost someplace where he is going to get really really hurt.

As soon as they're back at Kelly's house, he thanks her for the fun day, tells her he's got some work to do, and takes off on the bike, not wanting to see her surprise at how desperate he is to leave.

He knows he's supposed to be taking it easy today, but he goes into the garage and does about an hour of lifting with Brendan's weights, just to take his mind off. It doesn't really work, so he calls Pop and says, "Look, Pop, I gotta ask you somethin' but not if it's gonna kick you off the wagon. Is that okay?"

Pop's quiet for a long three minutes before he asks what Tommy wants to know.

"Mom. Can you talk about Mom a little bit?"

Pop clears his throat, and then does it again, and finally says, "A little bit. I been wonderin' when you might ask me about her. Me and Brendan talked about her some a while back."

"Did you love her?" There it is, he just lays it out, can't explain why he wants to know.

There's another long silence, during which Tommy thinks about that wedding photo of his parents, where they look so awfully young, and so happy. He thinks that it probably meant something that Mom hadn't wanted to take it with her. She'd put a few photos in her suitcase, just a few: the one-year-old pictures of himself and Brendan, the photo of her parents and herself and Aunt Lucy, and she'd gone and gotten Brendan's recent school picture off the wall, and that was it. Somewhere he's got all these things, probably with her rosary, in that little box he hasn't opened in years.

When Pop's voice comes over the phone again, it's heavy and as gravelly as if he's been eating rocks. "Yeah. Yeah, I loved her."

Tommy bites his lip so he can't yell, _Well, then, why the fuck didn't you act like it?_ And in about thirty seconds, Pop goes on. "I know you wanna ask why couldn't I treat her like I loved her. And I can give you all kinds of reasons, and none of 'em are good, and all of 'em add up to the fact that I wasn't strong enough."

Pop, not "strong enough." Great, now he feels worse.

"I mean, it was a different time, and men didn't go talk to shrinks so they could deal with hard things. If they couldn't deal with them, they got drunk. That's what we did. And I don't excuse it. It was wrong. It was wrong to treat you and your brother and your mother the way I did. It was wrong, and I'm sorry. I can't go back and do it again, or I would fix it. Because I loved all three of you. Back then, I hated myself."

Tommy knows how easy it is to dump crap all over people you love when you feel lower than low, when you are sure they don't love you back because of how worthless your full-of-shit self is. It is _easy_. So because it would be easy to dump on Pop, he keeps his mouth shut.

Pop sounds like one of those rock crushers down at the quarry now. "Your mother got the worst of it because she was the one with the most to lose. I thought that loving her would make things better, and it never did. But that wasn't her fault." There's another pause, and he says, "Tom, I'm sorry, I can't talk any more now."

"That's okay, Pop." It's not okay. It never will be. But it is okay that Pop can't talk now.

"You are stronger than your old man," Pop says, like he means it, and then he hangs up without waiting for Tommy to say goodbye.

So then Tommy has to go running, just so he doesn't have to think about Mom's face so hopeful in that picture, and Pop's face so happy. So he can think about how he feels about Kelly, and if that's all just sort of a stupid wish to go back and fix what was wrong with his childhood, or if what's between them is real. So he can think about what it means to blame God for not giving him what he wanted, and if that's all crap or all true, or maybe someplace in between. It's starting to feel _true_, but still not fair.

So he lays it out for God too: _Look, God, you didn't show up when I needed you. When Mom needed you. You abandoned us and you let Mom die, so how could anybody call you good? And where were you anyway?_

Then right inside his brain, something says, _I was right there. You didn't recognize me because I didn't give you what you wanted. I'm still here, and I'm waiting for you, Tommy_.

He's so surprised he has to stop running. "What was that?" he says out loud, and the voice inside his brain, which actually sounds like his own voice, says,_You know_. He stands still a minute, waiting for something else, and when his head stays silent he starts running again.

That is _the weirdest thing _he's ever experienced in his life. And when he finally gets home, his brain feels so twisted up that he sucks down a double-volume protein shake, takes a shower, then eats the dinner that Tess left him in the fridge, completely unable to say anything beyond the basics again – "Yeah, fine," and "Thanks, Tess," and "Going to bed now."

But later, he's in bed trying to sleep and can't, and close to midnight his cell phone buzzes. Message. _Dammit. _It's her, he knows it's her, and she's probably worried about him. _Leave me the hell alone_, he thinks furiously at the stupid phone, and then not ten seconds later he's hoping she won't. _Damn_. Ought to read the message, anyway.

The message is, _Hey, had a great time today, thanks for being part of it. Call if you want, or if not, sleep well._

Well, shit. Like he's going to sleep well without talking to her. Stupid to try, really.

So he calls, and when she answers that warm spot in his chest comes back, and he knows he's so far gone already that even if he left for the 'Burgh now he'd still be where he is right here. It's _not love_, it's not, but it is a hell of a dose of want and need and some kind of belonging, like some sort of connection, and it is bizarre that he feels like this about a girl that he's never even _kissed_, for Chrissake.

He can't tell her about this thing that feels like a conversation with God, because he's not quite sure that he's not gone completely nuts. But he tells her about Pop, talking about Mom, and he finds himself saying that he worries that he's too much like Pop to ever be happy in a relationship. That Brendan might be able to do it, but maybe he can't.

She's quiet for awhile. "I don't know, Tommy. You've never been anything but sweet around me, and around the kids, so I don't know why you're worried about it. I mean, look, I know you've been a soldier," – he wants to correct her, he was a _Marine_, not a soldier – "and you don't get far being sweet in that line of work. So I know I haven't seen all of the person you are. But I think you're a good person."

They talk a little more, but it's clear she's exhausted and they've both got to get up early, so he tells her goodnight. Somehow, though, he feels okay about things at the moment, and sleep comes easy.

**A/N: "Star City Grille" is my way of sticking my hometown's nickname right into the middle of urban Philly. I'm going to speculate that a Roanoker moved to Philadelphia and named his fun downtown restaurant after the place he grew up. Roanokers love their neon. (Go to Flickr and search for "roanoke neon sign" if you're bored and you'd like to see some pics.)**

**And yes, there are elderly couples who will stop by your table and congratulate you on well-behaved children. Used to happen to me all the time when my kids were little (and well-behaved on pain of Mom's Glare of Imminent Death).**

**The God conversation is based on anecdotes about people who say they have heard what seemed to them to be God's voice. I'm talking about relatively sane people, who do not report that God told them to walk naked in the snow or murder people or pants the president, just for example. **


	22. Chapter 22: Headache

**Ch 22: Headache**

Brendan has been making the weight room at the high school available for wrestlers since school let out, and helping the team captains set up a conditioning regimen. They can't practice since the official season won't start until November, so no mat work, but conditioning he can do. So he leads twice-daily runs, with the morning one mandatory and the evening one optional, and he guides the weightlifting, and the sixteen guys on the team are all at such different levels that it's really interesting, keeping them challenged and motivated. Girls are allowed to wrestle, but he won't have any until those two 8th-graders move up to high school next year.

This leaves his late afternoons free, so he can come home and hang with the kids, or take them to the pool. The dynamic's a little different with Kelly's boys in the house: no longer are the girls _only_ playing pretend, or tea party, or dolls, or swinging, but also playing kickball and just running around more. And the pool hijinks got a lot sillier, too. It's nice. Not that he would change his daughters – they are girls, and they can play any way they want, but his skill set gets more usage when they're learning how to snag grounders or run bases. He wonders if their lives would all change if there was another baby. Maybe a boy. It wouldn't matter, really, he's gotten good at parenting girls and he's not so shallow as to think that he needs a son to carry on the family name or anything.

Emily has been missing her karate lessons, suspended for the summer, which Brendan thinks is a shame. Summer's the perfect time to teach kids stuff because their minds are not taken up with school. So while she tries to teach him and Rosie and Jack to do cartwheels (Martin has absolutely refused), he tries to think of a way to do something else active, in a somewhat regulated fashion. Emily has an idea. "Want to teach me how to fight, Daddy?" she asks.

His reaction is swift and uncompromising: _No_. No daughter of his will learn to take that kind of punishment, face that kind of injury. "No, sweetie. I don't want you getting hurt."

"But you did it," she says, sweetly rational (and how's he going to argue with the facts?), "you and Uncle Tommy. He's still doing it. What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's _wrong_ with it," he says, realizing that she really hasn't connected his bruises and cuts and muscle misery with the fighting. "But you can get hurt doing it. And you don't need to do that." Emily hasn't seen the aftermath of Tommy's competition either. Tommy hasn't even done any of those small fights; Frank has pretty much insisted that he wants Tommy's skills under wraps. Brendan thinks that's a mistake, a rare one for Frank, but Frank's the coach.

Emily likes learning, and she misses her karate. So he checks out a book on karate for kids from the public library and starts drilling her on what she knows already. Jack wants to learn too, although Brendan thinks that's more just wanting to be around a man plus Jack's intellectual curiosity. Jack's a thinker; Martin's a doer. In any case, it's fun, even though Rosie just watches and practices her ballet positions in the garage.

One afternoon they're working on some kicks when Tommy comes home, exhausted and sweaty. He's been in strange moods lately, Tommy has – he can go from relaxed to grim and back like _that_. And those dark circles are back under his eyes, like he's not getting enough sleep. He watches Brendan with the kids for a little while, and then he goes into the garage and works some with the free weights, just as if he hasn't done some lifting already today, and it takes a minute for Brendan to realize Tommy has something on his mind.

Well, Brendan's had something on his mind for awhile too, and he's been waiting for a good time to talk to Tommy about it, but it seems that there isn't one. Maybe he'll just do it anyway. He tells the kids they're done for the day, and they can go swing or something before dinner, and he goes to the garage.

He picks up one of the small weights and starts to work some tricep curls, just to have something to do. "Hey."

"Hey," Tommy says back, not stopping the sit-ups he's moved on to.

"You got a minute?"

Tommy cuts his eyes over at Brendan, looking wary but not hostile. That's a change from a couple of years ago, anyway. "Yeah." He doesn't stop working, but he slows down.

"Been thinkin' about Mom a lot lately."

"Not surprising. You know, she woulda been 56 last week." Tommy's matter-of-fact but there's an undercurrent of sadness in his voice.

"I know." Brendan switches arms. "I just... been wondering if she missed me. If maybe she talked about me."

"You kiddin' me?" Tommy does that brief snort thing that's only part amusement, or maybe it's just amusement at how stupid the thing you just said is. "She didn't talk about you a lot, but she missed the hell outta you. Cried on your birthday. Cried on Christmases and Easters and the whole first week of June the year you were supposed to graduate." He stops doing situps and starts doing bicep curls, which Brendan knows he doesn't really need to do.

They're both quiet for a minute, while Brendan thinks about their mother. Her smell. The little _I love you _notes she'd stick in his lunchbox for school. The warmth of her body in her chenille robe, and the candles she'd put on birthday cakes. _Mom_, he says to her silently, _Mom, I'm sorry. I miss you._

"We shoulda found some way to get messages to each other," Tommy says. "I could have figured somethin' out, if I hadn't been so mad at you. I coulda sent something to Aunt Lucy, maybe. Or somebody at the church."

"Yeah. You could have." But Brendan's not angry now, he's thinking of how Tommy always needed that little bit of reassurance that his ideas were sound. "If I'd been thinking when you left I coulda suggested it."

"She was so scared that Pop would find us." Tommy switches arms, too. "I drove myself crazy six times a day thinking I had to tell you she was sick, and she kept saying no, he'd find us. I was almost to the point of tellin' her that it wasn't gonna matter if he did, but she was so scared. All I could do was hang on to her and tell her it would be okay."

Brendan closes his eyes, trying to keep the tears back. "Oh, Tommy."

"I mean, I lied to her. I knew she was dying and I told her it would be okay."

"But you were there. With her."

"Yeah." Tommy sets the weight down, so now Brendan can too. They just look at each other for a minute, and then Tommy says, "I missed you too."

Brendan can't talk just yet. He nods. And Tommy touches his shoulder before walking out of the garage.

O : O : O :

At 3:37 on Wednesday afternoon Tess calls Kelly's cell phone and leaves her a message. "Hey, it's Tess. Listen, I just got home from yoga, and I know this is short notice, but I miss you. When you come get the boys, can you stay and have dinner with us? Nothing fancy. Call me back, okay?" _ I should have texted that_, she thinks, clicking the END button. Oh, well. She's still more comfortabletalking to Kelly, and it's an old habit.

At 5:04, Kelly calls back and says she's exhausted and head-achy and was absolutely dreading making dinner, so Tess is a _godsend_ and _yes, thank you,_ she will be over as soon as possible.

At 6:15, everyone is sitting down to dinner. Kelly's still got a headache, Rosie is giggly with joy at being seated next to Jack, and Martin's hungry enough to dive right into his plate without annoying anyone else. Kelly, in contrast, is picking at her food. Every few minutes she'll press her fingers to her brow bone. "Kelly," Tess asks her, "you want some ibuprofen or something?"

"I had some earlier, thanks." Kelly says. "I might take another one in a while."

"I'll make you some hot tea," Tess offers, and Kelly admits that would be nice. Twenty minutes later almost everyone has finished eating, the kids have scattered, and Tess is setting a steaming mug of Darjeeling in front of her best friend. "Allergies?" she asks.

"I think just tension. I spent most of the afternoon working on patient files on the computer, and I maybe didn't pay as much attention to my ergonomics as I should have. The work surface is too low, I think. The back of my neck's really tight."

Tess puts a hand to Kelly's neck and prods experimentally, causing Kelly to yelp in pain. "Sorry. Yeah, that feels like a steel-belted radial in there." She begins to massage the back of Kelly's neck, eliciting another stifled _ow!_ "Good grief, girl."

"Why don't you let me get the kids out of your hair for a little while?" Brendan offers. "Let 'em watch a video or something, so they don't make a lot of noise."

"Sounds good, babe," Tess says, blowing him a kiss as he gets up from the table. As he comes past her to go fetch the kids, he stops and grabs her chin so he can kiss her before going upstairs. Tess, back to taking care of her friend, works her way up to the cranial ridge and digs her thumbs in on either side of the neck bones, and Kelly actually moans. "That's it, isn't it? _That's_ the spot."

Kelly nods. She's got her eyes closed, when Tess leans over to look, and she keeps making those little noises of hers, from _oh_ to _ow_ to _nggh_. "It hurts, but you're getting it," she says, breathless. Tess' hands are getting tired because the muscles are so stiff, but she wants to keep on.

Tommy gets up and puts his plate in the dishwasher, and then comes up next to Tess. "Here," he says. "My hands are stronger than yours," and because he's probably right, Tess lets him take over. The minute he presses into the knotted muscle, Kelly lets out another guttural cry, grimacing with pain. "Sorry," he says.

"No, that's _helping,_" she says, still breathless. "It just hurts."

"Tess, we really need a heat pack on this before the massage is going to help much," he says, still rubbing, so Tess gets one of Brendan's out and microwaves it.

Then the three kids run back through the kitchen on their way to the TV room in the basement, and Kelly winces again. Brendan follows them. "Hey, 'Shrek Ever After' okay with you?" he asks.

She comes out with another two or three inarticulate noises, and Brendan stops dead in the middle of the kitchen. "God, Kelly, what do you sound like in bed? Sounds like a porno being filmed in here."

Tess smacks him on the arm, not hard. "Be. _Nice_. She's in pain."

"I'm just sayin'." He waggles his eyebrows at Tess, and she shakes her head in mock-despair. He heads downstairs with the kids, and the microwave beeps.

Tess passes the hot compress over to Tommy, who drapes it over Kelly's neck, covers it with a towel, and tells her to be still while he's holding it there. "And close your eyes," he adds, in an authoritative tone Tess thinks might be his Sergeant-giving-orders voice.

"You should probably be in a dark room, too," Tess adds. "Want to lie down on my bed – Oh. Never mind, I forgot to put clean sheets back on after I washed the others." Tommy rolls his eyes at her, and she smacks _him_ on the arm, not hard. "I'll _get_ to it! For heaven's sake, I'm not even getting into bed before the kids are asleep."

"No time like the present to get your work done," he says, and smirks.

"Yeah, well, _I'm_ going to put the leftovers away now and clean up the kitchen. Gotta get some _work _done." She wrinkles her nose at her brother-in-law and is rewarded by one of his rare genuine smiles, the affectionate ones he gives to Emily and Rosie. "_Your_ bed's made up, is it?"

"As of 5:12 this morning," he says, smugly.

"Well, why not let her lie down in there?" Tess suggests. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a little ways off the kitchen, and Kelly never seems bothered in the least by improprieties. Not that Tommy would be improper, anyway – if anything, he's standoffish when it comes to physical contact that doesn't involve either fists or playing with children. "Turn the light off, leave the door open a little."

"Okay," Kelly says. "For a few minutes."

She gets up, holding the heat pack on with one hand, and Tess and Tommy steer her into the guest suite. "On your back," Tess says. "So the heat pack presses into the muscle there." Kelly lies down and sighs.

"Ten minutes," Tommy says. "Just relax. I'll be back." He gestures to Tess to go out, and he follows her. It takes the two of them just about ten minutes to get the food put away and all the dishes in the dishwasher.

"I'll go make up my bed right now, you slave driver," Tess says, "while you take care of poor Kelly."

He just nods, and she heads upstairs. Bed made (he's right, she does feel better about having it done already), she comes back down and sticks her head into the dim guest suite she's begun to think of as really being "Tommy's room." Kelly's sitting on the floor, facing away from Tommy, and he must really be getting that spot on her neck softened up now because although she's still making those noises, she sounds much less anguished, more relaxed – as if the massage feels nice. "You guys okay?"

"Yes," Kelly says with her eyes still closed.

"I'm going to be watching the video downstairs until you need to go, okay?"

"Fine," Kelly says back, and Tess leaves the door half open and goes straight downstairs to cuddle her daughters and her husband and maybe a little boy or two, if they're willing. She'd like another baby, to be honest, but she doesn't know how Brendan feels about it. Maybe she'll ask him later.

O ) O ) O )

Kelly has been miserable most of the day, up to and including the time Tess and Tommy started rubbing on her neck, but as soon as they put the hot pack on, the situation started to improve. Right now, it's even better. The knots in her neck are melting away, and the headache is receding bit by bit, so that the massage actually feels good.

She doesn't know how long it takes for the knot to fully recede, but it does, to the point that her neck feels like soft butter, and she can barely hold it up anymore. She yawns. Then, feeling slightly guilty that his hands might be tired, she says, "That feels so much better, you have no idea. Thank you."

"You done?" he asks.

"Mm-hm. It was lovely." She's wondering how to ask whether he can just leave her sitting where she is in the dark, without being so rude as to say, _Hey, leave me alone in your private_ _space,_ when he slides his hands up higher on her head, pressing gently on her skull through her hair, and she can't restrain a little moan of enjoyment.

"Thought so," he says, not quite smug, more just pleased with himself for knowing she could stand some more. "Turn around so I can get a better angle on that."

Kelly ooches herself around so that she's now sitting facing him, and he immediately runs his hands back up through her hair to the spots near her temples and over her ears, where it still hurts a little. "Close your eyes," he says, and goes back to work – more gently this time, but with a firm thoroughness that gets to the achy places all over her head.

Eventually the headache subsides and she winds up in some cloudy Zen place of utterly pleasurable relaxation that might be the anteroom of heaven. Time to come back to earth. The pressure he's been using on her sore scalp has lightened into something more like a caress. She says, "I feel _so _much better. Thank you," meaning every word, and opens her eyes.

She's looking straight into his. He doesn't look away. He doesn't move his hands. And suddenly she needs more air than she's getting at the moment.

There's enough light coming in from the kitchen through the open door to show his whole face, though the right side of it is somewhat in shadow. The light is strongest on his facial bones – brow and eye socket, cheek and chin – and points up the length of his straight nose, glances off his lush mouth. His eyes, in this light, are dark as deep water, and her very first thought is, _You're so beautiful_.

What her brain pulls up next is a line from a Sarah MacLachlan song, _A beautiful fucked-up man._

He is. Both very beautiful and incredibly fucked-up, and although her head knows that having such a man in her life would be a bad choice, a terrible choice, probably The Worst Ever, certain heartache and trouble on the hoof, her heart's got its eyes open and is looking for what's there to be salvaged. And there's so much.

They're looking into each other's eyes – falling in, really, and while she's falling down into those ocean-deep eyes she starts seeing him, seeing what's inside: loyalty, duty, devotion to family, a stubbornness that goes right down to the bone. But what really gets to her, what makes tears come up in her eyes, is the deep tenderness under everything else, not a thin layer but wells of it, pink and vulnerable and buried like treasure.

The tears overflow, just rolling silently down her cheeks, and he wipes them away with his thumbs just as silently. She can't speak, and the hot ache in her throat travels lower, to the center of her chest, and then lower still, to that place that really hasn't been awake since she last made love to Mike. And that's been years, since she held Mike there and loved him, and _meant_ it.

Tommy blinks, slowly, and swallows, and Kelly wonders for one panicky second whether that feeling's transmitted itself to him through her skin, or her tears, or maybe her gaze piercing straight into him. And then she knows it was there before she even opened her eyes, that he's just as susceptible to touch as she is, and that's another thing he's been hiding all this time. That it's not just her, it's him too.

She's got a choice: feel or think, yes or no. Scared of the power in her feelings, she chooses what her head says, _no,_ and moves her head back just the slightest bit. Drops her eyes. He gets it. Takes his hands out of her hair, away from her face, very slowly.

"You good?" he asks softly. She nods, and he eases his body away from her, just a couple of inches back. But he seems just as unwilling to abandon the intimacy of the setting as she is, and he doesn't move any farther.

"I meant," she begins, and has to clear her throat, "I've been meaning to ask you about your tattoos." She's not sure why she's prolonging this, except that she doesn't want to just let it go. The smart thing to do would be to get up, go downstairs, collect her boys and take them home. But she's being at least semi-dumb, sitting there close enough to smell him, clean laundry and warm male skin, and it's making her dizzy.

_Don't do this_, her brain warns her. _Just because he's beautiful. In a lot of ways, he's not much __more grown-up than dear sweet dumb young Martin. Not to mention the family issues and the war issues and possibly substance-abuse issues. And you have issues of your __**own**__, you know, and it might not be fair to subject him to those._ Her body's not really listening. It's cataloguing the scar on his chin and the one through his eyebrow, his pulse beating in the hollow of his throat, that astoundingly lovely mouth, the heat of his gaze on her.

"Whatcha wanna know?" They're still talking very softly, mindful of that open door.

"Which one did you get first?"

"Do you wanna guess?"

"I've only seen them once," she confesses, aware that it's likely that a lot of women, including Tess' yoga friends, have probably made it a point to study his tattoos and the muscles underneath them. "I don't remember them that well."

"The scorpion on my back. I just got it to look like a badass, really. Kind of stupid, but hey, I was nineteen." This almost makes her cry again. "And tribals got hot for awhile, and I got this one." He points to his right shoulder. "I still like it. Then I started kinda getting into the tats, choosing art that meant something to me."

"Like the Madonna," she says. "That's for your mother, isn't it?" He nods. "I think I want another one," she says, and his eyebrows go up.

"_You _have a tattoo?" he asks.

She just had this conversation with Tess, seems like. "Right shoulder blade. It says, 'Stronger.' But I can't see that one, and lately I've been thinking that I want one where I can look at it. Maybe on my arm, or something."

"Do you know what art you want?"

"Yes. It's not very big. I'm thinking inner wrist."

He shakes his head; she can see that even though she's still looking down at her wrist where she wants the koru symbol. "Not there, it'll hurt. It'll fade because it's so exposed, and usually the skin is really thin and sensitive there so the ink spreads out too wide and blurs the outlines. You can go up a little away from your hand," and he reaches out and runs his thumb across the spot she means, "and it will last longer, but I warn you, it'll still hurt like a mofo."

"You ever give birth?" she says, trying to keep the breathlessness out of her voice because he's right, that skin is sensitive and the ache in her abdomen has suddenly gotten much, much worse, and she can actually feel her bra pressing against her nipples. "I think I can handle it."

"Well, it's your decision." His thumb is still there on her wrist, still moving back and forth, lightly, stirring feelings elsewhere in her body.

"Which one of yours hurt worst?"

"The one on my side. Here." He points, and now she remembers. It's the one with the Gothic lettering, the one that says_ till I die s w_, and it is, if she's honest, the one she really wants to touch but knows she can't, not if she wants to be smart. A man who says _till I die_ somewhere on his body, that just kills her about it, never mind that it's not far from his waistband.

"Who's S W?"

He's silent a minute. Finally takes his fingers off her wrist,_ thank God_, because she's quite sure that her nipples must be obvious now. "Stands for Scorpion Warriors. Unofficial platoon nickname. It was kind of a joke because of me and Manny and Fleischman and my scorpion tat, and then it wasn't just a joke, it was _us._ And we were the only ones who knew." He draws up a breath through his nose and lets it out. "Don't want to talk about that right now."

"Okay," she says. "Which one means the most to you?"

He's silent again, and then he says, "Guess."

It's not the Till I Die one, she thinks, or he'd have pointed to his side and left it at that. But which? She wants so badly to touch him that she can't help it: her left hand rises in the air as if someone's pulled it on a string, and she puts two fingers to the number 6 on his collarbone, peeking out where the neckline of his tee opens. "This," she says, steadying her voice past his little intake of breath. He nods. Speaking of soft skin, his is soft to the touch there, and the ache in her abdomen blooms into wildfire heat.

"This is a service number," she says. She remembers Daddy's dog tags, though she hasn't seen them in years. Noah's got them, way off in San Diego.

"Manny's," he says, very quietly, and her blooming arousal suddenly seems like sacrilege, so she takes her fingers away.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

"He was my brother." There is so much pain in that bald statement that yet again her eyes fill up with tears. She wipes them away herself, scared again by how much she _feels_. He gets up, steps out of the room, and it's only then that she hears the footsteps on the basement stairs: Tess, coming to check on her.

Through the open door she hears Tess say, "How's she doing?"

Tommy replies that she's much better, she just wanted to stay in the dim light for awhile, and she might like some more tea if Tess will show him how to use the electric kettle.

"Simplest thing in the world," Tess says. "Water goes in _here, _ON button _here_. When it boils, it turns off automatically. Here's a teabag, and a fresh cup. I'll go watch some more Shrek if you guys are okay."

"We're okay," he says. Tess' footsteps go downstairs, and Tommy stays in the kitchen until the tea is brewed, and that's good because it lets Kelly breathe and calm down and _try_, at least, to stop thinking about what it feels like to touch him and how much she wants to do it again.

It's a battle. Later, she will look back on this evening and recognize that this was the moment at which she lost control of her heart, that the balance had already tipped and everything that happened afterward would have happened anyway despite her best efforts to keep herself on track.

But she doesn't know that now. All she knows now is that she's in danger, and in danger of likng it too much, and that it's probably just rebound, so she should maybe take a look at actually starting to date – not seriously, but maybe just getting a toe in the water, meeting a few nice guys... the idea doesn't appeal much, but she tells herself that she just doesn't know what's out there. The love of her life might be out there, just waiting for her, and the sooner she gets to know him the sooner she'll know he's the one.

Because no matter how attracted she is to Tommy Conlon and how sweet he is underneath all the bad history, he is Trouble. For _her_, anyway. For some other girl, who's never had an angry man's fist coming at her, who's never struggled with somebody else's war history, he'd be a prize, and she sighs a little for the past.

Tommy brings her hot tea with a little honey in it, and stands in the doorway while she drinks it – slowly, it's still very hot. "Where's the place in town to get tattoos?" he asks her. "You checked it out yet?"

"I hear the Inkspot, downtown. Met a guy at the hospital wellness center who had some really nice black work, and he said they did it."

"Oh." Little pause. "I might get some more work done. Maybe."

As if he isn't gorgeous the way he is. _Trouble_, Kelly tells herself, and to remind herself of it she asks him if he's found a counselor yet. He shakes his head. "You're not going to, are you?" she says, already knowing the answer.

"Don't really have the money. Or the time."

"So your plan is to just suffer through it." She doesn't like the sarcastic way her voice comes out, but she can't seem to help it.

"Done it all my life," he says. Shrugs. _No big deal, I'm tough, it's the way I roll._ She can almost hear him thinking it.

"And that's worked so well for you." Makes her absolutely furious, the way guys think they can just shove all those feelings down, until they come boiling back up through the fists. The man thinks he actually IS John Wayne. Gah.

He suddenly moves to the side of the doorway, so that the light falls on her face. "What's it to you? I mean, why're you hittin' me with that?" She doesn't answer. Looks into her mug instead. "Look, I ain't your ex. That's what this is about, right?"

She doesn't answer again, because now it's obvious even to her that's why she's so pissed off. Mike had even said something about it to her, not long after his flashbacks started: _I'm tough, I don't need a shrink. I can deal with it myself._ She drinks tea instead, too fast and it burns her tongue, and the pain makes tears come up in her eyes. He sighs, a short exhalation, and shakes his head. "Rather just talk to you anyway. If that's okay."

She nods. She _had _offered. Had meant it as a friend. Had not realized just how dangerous it would be for her to be a confidant, the way her body responds when he talks to her, just_ talks_. The way his voice in her ear, over the phone, resonates into her chest. She can't back off the offer now; she'll just have to guard her heart and not start anything. _He _won't – he's never been anything other than gentlemanly, despite the rough language.

And, she realizes, Mike had never told her anything. She already knows more about Tommy's war than she does about Mike's, and she was married to Mike for six years. So maybe it does help.

Maybe it will be enough.

She tells herself that as she finishes her tea, gets up, thanks him again. Says she needs to get the boys home, because it's late and they need baths and they'll be grumpy as bears in the morning. And all the way home she tells herself she can do it, she can just be a friend. She doesn't have to let it _involve _her so much. Not involve her feelings, anyway.

She's in bed at 10:35, still telling herself to be a friend, when her cell phone pings with a message from Tess: _You ok?_

_Yes. Tired is all. Tks for tea & sympathy_.

Tess: _Hope your day is better 2morrow. See you and boys in the morning. Nite. Love._

_Nite. Love._

And then it pings again, Tommy this time: _Hey_. While she's deciding if she wants to get into a conversation, or whether she just needs to tell him she's going to sleep now, another message comes through: _Feel better?_

_God._ Her pulse has picked up. It's absolutely pathetic. She starts to text back something like, 'much better, but need some sleep,' but before she finishes that another message arrives, _Guess u r asleep. Ok._

So she erases her previous message, and types in, _You will never win any prizes for patience, Conlon,_ hits Send, and twenty seconds later her phone actually rings, and she just gives up. Lets that wave of warmth wash over her, and answers.

"You got that right," he says, and he's smiling, she can hear it. "I don't do patience."

It's not strictly true – she's seen him with children, throwing a ball over and over, or pushing Emily on the swing, or reading Rosie a book about ballerina mice when it's clear that he'd rather be doing anything else. "You are a mess," she says, trying not to feel so much affection for him, "impatient and stubborn and grouchy."

"Why ya put up with me then?"

Why indeed? Is it just that he is truly gorgeous? Or that the sweetness gets to her? Or that weird sort of connected feeling she gets about the two of them? All of that?

She's got no good answer. She gives him a cheesy one: "You give good head rubs."

"Mm-hm. I think you're full of it, Doherty." There's a teasing tone to his voice, but something anxious in it too.

"Truth? I don't know." Pause in which they both just breathe, silently. "I like you. Guess it's just good to have a friend." That much is true: she _does _like him. He _is_ a good friend.

"Yeah, okay. I'll take that."

And they talk a little longer. He tells her a story about somebody smuggling a puppy into the movie theater on the base at San Diego, and it makes her laugh. She tells him about Jack, age three, asking her to come turn on the light in his room because, as he'd said, "My room is full of dark."

It's past eleven when she finally says she has to get some sleep, and he says, "Talk to you tomorrow," and she says, _Good_, because she's already looking forward to it. God help her.

_A/N: As far as I know, there's no platoon or company using the nickname Scorpion Warriors; I made it up. If such a thing really exists, I don't mean the real one, okay? No disrespect here. And Marine service numbers have been associated with Social Security numbers instead of an 8-digit number starting with 1 since the early 70s, but we're going to just let that detail go. _

_As for men and the smell of their skin... oh, don't even get me started. My high school boyfriend smelled exactly like Sonoma Scent Studio's gorgeous Tabac Aurea: sunshine, snickerdoodle cookies, moss, dried leaves, leather jacket, fresh autumn air, pipe tobacco, and warm musky skin. The first time I smelled that fragrance I nearly fell over backward, and spent the entire rest of the day in a paroxysm of guilt and nostalgia and frustrated lust. Gah. (Laurie sells samples at the SSS website. Google it if you're interested.)_

_Oh... and anybody notice that Tommy's actually talking to Tess now? Not a lot. And not too cozy. But talking all the same. Progress._


	23. Chapter 23: I Like Your Girl

**Chapter 23: I Like Your Girl**

**A/N: Another big fat chapter here. Sorry. Just... a lot of stuff needs to happen.**

Brendan looks at Tess anxiously. "Up to you. I mean that, it's your call. I just... I think it's worth a shot. He knows what's at stake here, he won't screw it up."

She tilts her head back and forth, wavering. Brendan had been the one to ban his father from visiting after that disastrous drunken episode nearly five years before. But Paddy seems a different man now: except for falling off the wagon at the first Sparta, which he's told Brendan about, he's been sober for a long time. Sends cards to the girls. Calls to speak to Brendan, and then to Tommy, every other Sunday in the early afternoons. Is polite to Tess, and clearly would like to be warmer if she'll allow it.

Brendan plays another card. "He'll be sixty this year. And if we don't do anything, I doubt anybody else will mark the occasion."

Tess, thinking about the years when Paddy seemed to have forgotten he had another son besides the champion wrestler who'd left him, makes a face. She well remembers Brendan's last two birthdays living at his father's house, with no presents and no cards and not even a "Happy birthday, son."

He plays one more. "We always do Father's Day at your parents' – which is fine, I don't mind at all. But he's really trying, Tess. He's really trying now. And it's not that I want to forget the past, but I want to let go of the hurt of it. We can't really start over, but – well, Pop and me, we're different now. I am choosing to love my father in spite of the past." Brendan's so earnest; it's one of the best things about him. He can say sappy Hallmark-card things, and they don't sound stupid because he_ means_ them. "Pop can't make up for all the ways he screwed up in the past, but he's really trying to make things good now. I want to make that easier for him. Can you let me do that? I'd really love to have you on my side on this."

"What am I going to say to you, no?" Tess tells him. Maybe it's because he doesn't ask often, and he rarely asks for as much as he deserves, but it's hard to say no to Brendan when he really wants something. Frank can't do it, the school principal can't do it, and _she_ damn well can't. Paddy Conlon said no for far too long to his older son, and now all he wants to do is make up for that. "Okay. We can have a birthday dinner here for him and celebrate Father's Day a little early too."

"Thank you, sweetheart," Brendan says, and pulls her close. She lays her head on his shoulder, feeling the steady thump of his heart and the strength of his love. He is happier these days, she knows that. It might have something to do with his finding a way to forgive the past.

Tess suddenly thinks of something: she's promised Kelly a birthday party too. Paddy's birthday is on Thursday, Kelly's two days later. "Oh no." When she explains to Brendan, he says it's simple enough.

"Combine them," he says.

Tess gives him a skeptical look. "She knows something about your dad's history. She said something to me about it not that long ago – I think she was asking how you and your dad were getting along."

"I never told her about it," Brendan says.

"I think Tommy told her," Tess says. "I mean, he actually _talks _to her. It's so weird."

"Let it go," Brendan tells her. "She's like the little sister we never had, just let it go. And just ask her if she'd be bothered. We can split it up if she doesn't want to be around Pop."

Kelly turns out not to mind. She says to Tess that she could certainly understand Tess' concern, but that she is not going to spend time worrying about it. It would be different if Mr. Conlon weren't sober these days, she says, but as it is she thinks everything is going to be fine, with him on his best behavior. And if it isn't? Well, Kelly can just take her boys and go. But she thinks it will be okay. "I believe in second chances, Tess," she says, almost as earnest as Brendan on a particularly Hallmark-y day.

So on the Sunday afternoon before Father's Day, Tess is in the kitchen preparing some of Paddy's favorite foods for a big birthday dinner, and Emily and Rosie are in the basement family room coloring "Happy Birthday Grandpop!" cards. Brendan's wrapping up a couple of Paddy's presents (a new framed studio photo of Brendan, Tess, and the girls, plus a smaller framed snapshot of Tommy holding Emily and Rosie, all three of them smiling).

Tommy's off God-knows-where, probably taking a nap or doing that strange meditation thing Frank taught him. He's been awake later than usual lately, she's noticed. She can sometimes hear his voice late at night, especially if she's fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, head on Brendan's shoulder, as he's watching the Pirates lose (again) on TV. The game will go off, Brendan will wake her up, and they'll head upstairs together – but not before she hears Tommy's voice, muffled by distance and at least one door. She'd _love_ to know who he's talking to. If she had to guess? The widow of that Marine buddy of his, way out in Texas. It's a girl of some kind, though. There's just something in his voice, something warm and hopeful, sort of silvery, that tells her so.

Tess checks to make sure she's got plenty of fresh broccoli and summer squash, and then proceeds to chop it up into ready-to-be-steamed chunks. The spinach salad with nectarines is already tossed, and she won't add the vinaigrette until later. The steaks are marinating, there are baked potatoes ready to go into the oven, and she's already finished topping the chocolate cake with _Happy Birthday_ in green icing. The strawberries have been washed and dried carefully, had their caps removed, and been piled into her prettiest pink Depression glass bowl.

Her cell phone rings about the time that she's got the dining room table set and prepped, and she snatches it up, hoping against hope it's Kelly and she's got the rolls from Magruder's because Tess hasn't had time to go get them today and because Magruder's is on the way from Kelly's to Tess' house. (As good a cook as Tess is, she's never quite mastered fluffy yeast rolls.) She checks the number, lets out a whoop, and answers. "Kelly!"

Brief pause. "Yeah, it's me," Kelly says, a little nonplussed by her voice. "_Yes_, I have your rolls in my car as we speak, and _yes_, we are en route right now."

"Oh good. And I just have time to go upstairs and put on some decent clothes. I look like a scrubwoman."

"Ha," Kelly says. "Like you ever – "

Tess interrupts her, suddenly having a thought. "Oh, hey, what are you wearing?" She's got ulterior motives for wanting to know.

"Um... well, I dressed up a little. I have that aqua cotton dress on – you know, the one with the square neck and the lace trim? The one you made me buy because it made me look about sixteen?" And Tess laughs. It's exactly what she'd hoped for, it's perfect. "I figured I needed the help because I just turned thirty-one. I'm _ancient_," Kelly says dramatically, and then she laughs too.

Tess made Kelly buy that dress last month because a) it does make her look young, and b) it was on clearance from last summer, and c) it had looked _so _terrific with the orange peep-toe platform wedges that Kelly had wanted badly but had to put, reluctantly, back on the rack because they didn't fit her budget.

So because Kelly's wearing her dress, Tess goes and puts on her purple cotton sundress with the wide straps, and her black sandals, and goes back downstairs just in time to answer the doorbell. It's Paddy, and he's come bearing gifts of his own: a bouquet of pink flowers, a tin of cashews, a bag of peaches from the farmers' market, and matching princess star wands covered in sequins for the girls. Tess is so surprised that it takes her a minute to stutter out, "But – b-but, you didn't need to bring us anything, it's _your_ birthday!"

Paddy shrugs a little, makes a self-deprecatory face. "I got a lot to catch up on," he says softly. The whiskey-soaked growl is still there; the damage to his vocal cords must have been done ages ago and years of being sober hasn't corrected it.

"Well, come in," she says, taking the flowers, and then the girls rush the door and their grandfather, take the princess wands with glee and start bopping each other and Paddy with them, Rosie shouting, _Abbacadabba! Poof, magic, Grandpop!_ "Listen, Paddy, I'm just finishing up a few things in the kitchen, and my friend Kelly will be here in a little while. Brendan told you about her, right? I keep her two boys while she works, and today is her birthday."

"Who? Oh, oh yeah. Your nurse friend. I remember." Rosie hits him again with the star wand, and Paddy laughs, and they go back to playing. And about then, Brendan and Tommy walk in from the garage and there's general handshaking (Paddy's not much of a hugger) and birthday wishes being passed around.

And then Kelly comes in with the boys, and there's a to-do with introductions and the kids running around, and the whole house is full of good feeling and laughter.

Lunch is wonderful. Brendan's brought the card table and chairs in from the garage for the kids so there's room for everyone, and Tess sits at the table and looks around it at all these faces, family and almost-family, and if she could wish for anything at all she'd wish for _her _family to be there too – her mom and dad, her brother and sister and their families. But this is pretty darn good. She catches Brendan's eye, and the happiness in his face is just glowing: everybody together, nobody angry.

Later, she knows, he will be quiet. Thinking about his mother, who missed out on this family reunion. Wondering if she would have been happy to see it, if she'd have eventually returned to a sober Paddy. But for now, he's like sunshine. She blows him a kiss, and he pretends to catch it, and they give each other that look that promises more and better after everyone else is asleep.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Kelly look down and smile, as if she's seen that exchange. There's a small scuffle at the kid table – looks like the boys are kicking each other under it – and Kelly looks back up. "Martin! Jack!" She points her finger first at one of her sons and then the other, with her best Dirty Harry make-my-day expression, and says "Do you _want_ to go home now?"

"No," they chorus.

"All right then. I expect good behavior from both of you." And she turns back to her steak, but she looks across the table at Tommy and rolls her eyes just the tiniest bit, and he grins. This silent little communication reminds Tess so much of the way she and Brendan talk without saying a word that for two seconds she wonders if the girl Tommy's been talking to on the phone is Kelly. But when he speaks to her, his voice sounds normal and completely unlike the voice she's heard late at night.

"You're a tough mother, Doherty," he says.

"Dang right," Kelly says, and throws a significant look over at the kid table. "And don't you two forget it."

Jack looks chagrined, and a worried-looking Martin says, "Hug, Mommy?"

Kelly's face goes all _d'awwww_ for half a second, and then she composes it. "After lunch, sweetie. I love you too, I'm not mad, but I expect you to behave properly. You have broccoli to eat, hop to it."

"Okay," Martin says, and Rosie laughs, and Brendan tries not to. Paddy sips coffee to hide a smile, Tess bites her lip to hide hers, and Tommy's still openly grinning. Well, he was the baby too.

There's a short conversation in which Tommy tells Paddy that Kelly's father had been a Marine as well, and a back-and-forth over dates of service, and they determine that Paddy had been on his way home shortly after John Tipton Doherty landed in-country, and that it was unlikely they'd ever met. But there's something like respect in the way that Paddy looks across the table at Kelly afterward, like he approves of her or something.

After lunch (and Martin's hug), Tess and Brendan put food away and clean up the kitchen as fast as possible. She's shooed Paddy and Kelly into the living room with the injunction that birthday people do not help clean up, and sent Tommy in after them with the comment that the birthday people need company. The kids go in there too, and she can hear Rosie asking for Dance Time.

_Great_, she thinks, _that could be trouble_. "Dance Time," she says to Brendan, who's cleaning the grill grates. "Think they'll give your dad a pass or make him dance too?"

He shrugs. "Maybe he'll surprise us all and be good at it. God knows Tommy had to get it from somewhere." And then he says, "C'mere, while nobody's watching," and they just kiss for several minutes, all during "Twist and Shout" and into the beginning of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash, neither of which Tess can even remotely imagine Paddy dancing to. "I have to see this," Brendan says.

"Don't get caught, or she'll make you dance and I'll have to clean up all by myself," Tess warns him, putting the last of the food into the fridge.

He's back in twenty seconds, smiling. "Pop's dancing with Em. It's sweet. And Tommy's playing headbanging air guitar with Jack." Just as Tess is about to go peek, the music changes to that superb bubble-gum anthem, "Call Me Maybe," and they hear Tommy go _Aaaauuugghh! _in protest.

"Dance or leave, Conlon," Kelly calls, and he doesn't come out of the living room, so he must be dancing. Tess scrapes the plates and puts them into the dishwasher, and then she grabs Kelly's gift and Brendan picks up Paddy's three presents, and they go into the other room just as the music switches to Michael Jackson's "PYT" and Jack stops it.

"Thank God," Paddy mutters under his breath, setting Emily carefully back down, and Tess bites her lip so she won't laugh.

"Okay, birthday people: present time."

"That is so dumb, it's always the present time," Tommy says, looking indignant. It takes Tess a good seven seconds and a flash of his eyes toward her to figure out he's kidding, and then she laughs out loud. Tommy just made a _pun_ – the last thing she'd have expected.

Tess gets Emily and Rosie to distribute presents, and Kelly insists that Paddy should go first. He lets both the girls pile into his lap, and seems delighted with the new tweed cap from them and the handmade cards. He clearly loves the framed photos. Brendan and Tommy between them came up with a subscription to the premium NFL channel, so Paddy can get the good out of the new TV Brendan and Tess had given him for Christmas. There are also DVDs of Rosie's first dance recital and Emily's class play (in which she was an apple, representing healthy food). At the end of all this he looks up at Tess and says, "Thank you, Tess, I know you were responsible for organizing most of that bounty. I appreciate it. And thank you too, sweethearts." He kisses each grandchild on the head. "Brendan, Tommy, I thank you as well – not just for the birthday, but for making me proud of you."

And Tess thoroughlyenjoys the look on her husband's face. It's worth every single minute of cleaning and party preparation and cooking and biting back her fears that Paddy would make the day a misery, because it's been wonderful.

"Wouldn't be here without you, Pop," Brendan says, his face all full of that Hallmark earnestness, and Tommy just nods, but his eyes have a glow Tess has rarely seen in them. For once they look like brothers, with similar expressions on their dissimilar faces.

She lets the moment go on a little longer, and then when the kids begin to get restless, she says, "Okay, Kelly's turn."

"Now, how old _are_ you, Miss Kelly?" Paddy asks her. "You can't be a day older than twenty."

And Kelly just laughs. "Oh, I'm a lot older than twenty."

"You certainly don't look it," Paddy says, being gallant, being the smooth talker that neither of his sons have ever been. "But I suppose a lady with fine sons like that must be older than twenty. Happy birthday to you."

"Oh, and to you," Kelly says, and then she turns to take the card and wrapped box that Emily is holding out to her. Opens the card, reads, smiles. Blows a kiss to Tess.

"Open it!" Rosie orders. Rosie has no idea what's in the box, but Emily does, and Emily's clapping her hands with anticipation.

Kelly's capable nurse hands open the package neatly at the paper seam and lift off the paper, and then she nearly drops the box in surprise. "Is this – " she looks up wide-eyed at Tess, and Tess smiles and nods. "You got me _shoes!?_" Kelly looks as astounded as Tess had meant her to be. "You got me _these shoes?!_"

Tess nods again, excited for her. "Open the box, Kelly!"

And Kelly opens the box to reveal those platform wedges she'd wanted so badly the last time they went shopping together. Size 6, peep-toe, ankle straps, a deep red-orange color, and they make her about four inches taller, and she'd just loved them. Tess considers them a hundred and thirteen dollars well spent – a ridiculously expensive birthday present in the Conlon household, but just this once, worth it.

Kelly's grin is as wide as her whole face, and she's touching the leather with amazement. "I can't _believe_ you got me these shoes," she says, laughing and crying at the same time, her usual emotional spin cycle of everything-at-once, and she flies at Tess for a hug and kiss, thanking her fervently, and then at Brendan (who is faking a pretty good _yeah, sure, we bought you shoes, I knew it all along_ face). And she picks up Emily and spins her around, and then Rosie.

Tommy gets up and produces an envelope from the lamp table, and Tess blinks in surprise. He hands it to Kelly without comment. Kelly seems surprised too, but she opens the card and reads it, and very slowly her wide smile comes back, bit by bit as she reads. And when she looks up at Tommy, who is looking off to the side the way he does when he's embarrassed, her cheeks have gone bright pink. "This is – wow, Tommy. If I was being polite I'd say this was thoughtful, but I'm just going to be myself and say it's completely _awesome._" She walks over to where he's sitting on the arm of the sofa and hugs him, too, which he was clearly not expecting by the way his shoulders hunch up a little, and then she kisses his cheek. "Thank you. _Really, _thank you, that was a lovely thought."

Tommy's smiling, head turned to the side again, and Brendan asks, "So... what is it?"

"It's a gift certificate to the tattoo shop," Kelly explains. "I mentioned I wanted another tattoo, and – well, now I can go get one for my birthday."

"You're getting a tattoo?" Jack asks, looking scandalized.

"Yep."

"Only boys get tattoos," Jack insists.

"No, honey, girls can too." To Tommy she says, "Will you go with me? Do you mind?"

"Sure, I'll go," he says, still turned slightly away from the people in the room, and Tess suddenly realizes, _It's like he doesn't really trust that he's wanted._ Her heart gets squeezed just a little. Maybe this is why he's often so distant.

"That was very sweet, Tommy," Tess says, and is gratified to see him smile and duck his head.

O : O : O :

Kelly is having an emotional day.

She should probably say, "_another_ emotional day." Or maybe just "a day," because lately they're all topsy-turvy roller coaster crazy salad. She's just turned thirty-one, and her mother sent her a birthday card with a $10 bill in it, and her sister hasn't called, whereas her brother called before lunch and they talked for nearly an hour. And then Tess threw her a party and bought her those beautiful shoes, and Tommy is actually buying her a tattoo, and the boys have been horrible to each other today, just _horrible_. Gah. Ups and downs, swings and roundabouts.

In other words, her entire life.

Which, to be completely honest, is confusing the hell out of her these days, because she used to spend her spare time thinking about Mike... well, worrying about Mike – how he was doing, where he was, whether he was going to jerk her around some more or worse. Now she's constantly got about six things at the front of her mind, five little things and one big one: whether she will still be able to stay in her rented house when her lease runs out in September or if it will take the owners longer to sell it, when she'll be ready to go sit for her orthopedic specialty exam, if Jack's eyesight is really better with his glasses, whether Mike will keep up the regular child support payments, how she'll be able to manage to go visit her mom next weekend... and how long she's going to be able to keep from falling head-over-heels for Tommy Conlon.

She doesn't think it's going to be long. She feels like she's on the edge all the time. If he ever decides to get close enough to touch her with those full lips of his she's just going to be toast, and she already knows it.

And she's started to believe that he's not much like Mike. He's got pain and an ugly past, but he's fighting through them; he's making the most of his second chance, she thinks. And why her mind has changed recently she's not exactly sure, but she herself needed a second chance. So why shouldn't he get one?

She has already put on her new orange shoes and stashed her sensible teal flats in the box. These shoes make her feel seven feet tall (really, she's maybe 5' 4" in them, but still), and sexy as hell. Tess went overboard on these, but when Kelly had protested them in private, Tess had just said, "I wanted you to have them. That's it. No arguing," and hugged her tight.

The kids have been inside and out several times while the adults have drunk some lemonade and chatted casually, and here they come again, tearing through living room on their way to the backyard. "Boys!" she says. "Go _outside_ and run, don't run in the house." But she's misunderstood this time: this time, Jack is mad at Martin.

"You are _stupid_. You stupid, stupid baby, you don't know anything, and you are _mean._ You are the dumbest thing ever." And he pushes Martin in the back, which is behavior very unlike Jack's normal calm.

For two seconds Kelly's too shocked to say anything, and then she's getting what Martin's yelling back. "You just hate Daddy! You're the mean one, you're a poopyhead!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. What is all this about?" she demands, grabbing Martin by his shirt and pulling him toward her, and doing the same with Jack's arm. "You don't _hit_ each other. What is going on?"

Jack is so mad his voice is shaking. "I hate Martin." Over Jack's head, Tess makes a semi-humorous, _oh no here we go again_ face that any mom would recognize, and it helps. Jack won't be calm if Kelly's upset too.

"Okay, so what did Martin do?"

"He said he can't wait to see Daddy next Sunday," Jack accuses, and Martin sticks out his lip.

"You hate Daddy," Martin says, mutinously.

And Jack bursts into floods of tears, and Kelly begins to see. "Okay. Okay. Listen, Martin, I want you to go outside with Emily and Rosie, and I want you to play nice, you got me?" Martin nods, looking smug that he's not the one in trouble for once, and goes out.

"John Tipton Porter," Kelly says firmly to her oldest, who is so often gentle, and so distraught by his own anger, "you go on in the kitchen, and I will be in there in a minute. I have a thing or two to say to you." Jack goes. Kelly gets a deep breath, rolls her eyes at Tess, grabs the box of tissues (she knows Jack), lets the breath out, and plunges into the kitchen.

Jack has taken off his glasses and put them on the table, and is rubbing his wet eyes, trying to calm down. "I'm sorry, Mommy, I'm just so _mad_."

"I know, baby. It's okay, it's really okay to be mad. And sad. Come here." She hugs Jack up close, and wipes his eyes. Makes him blow his nose. "Listen, baby. Listen, this is important. I know you are mad at Martin, and I know sometimes he is mean. But what exactly did he say?"

Little by little she gets the story out of Jack, that Martin had said that staying with Daddy was fun and way cooler than staying with Mommy, because Daddy lets them stay up late and eat lots of chocolate and watch movies (_mm-hm_, Kelly thinks, having a suspicion confirmed), and Jack said he hated Daddy, because Daddy is mean, so Martin pushed Jack, and then Jack chased Martin, and it's all stupid Martin's fault...

She stops the litany of complaint and says, "Okay, first things first. Jack, that is your _brother_. You only have one, and it is okay to be mad, but you do _not _hurt him. Because you are special to each other. You have to take care of each other. It is important, do you understand?" Jack sniffles a little. "I know. You can be mad, but you don't hurt each other. Ever." And finally he nods.

"Good. Now, I need to know, has Daddy ever hurt you or Martin when you went to his house?" Jack shakes his head. "That's the truth?"

Jack nods. "He's just scary. And he's mean. He hurt your arm, and he pushed me. He's scary. And Martin is stupid because he doesn't know that."

"This was before we went to live with Nana and Grampa Fred?" She just wants to clarify, and Jack nods again. "Jackie, baby, Martin doesn't remember that. He was too little. I know Daddy scared you. He's promised never ever to do that again. And I won't let him hurt you any more."

"Why do I have to go?" Jack pleads. "Please don't make me. I wanna be with you."

Kelly has to fight back her tears. "Honey, you have to go because a judge says you do. If Daddy scares you again, you have to tell me, and that will make it so you don't have to stay with Daddy. But listen, you can't just _say _that he scared you. Please give him a chance to do it right, because everybody deserves another chance. He loves you."

Jack hugs her really tight, and she just hugs back. Then he says, "I wish you didn't get divorced. I wish Daddy was home and nice again. I'll be good if you make him be nice again. I won't be bad ever again."

"Oh, now look here, baby," she says. "This is not your fault, do you hear me? It's _not your fault._ Daddy and I argue, but it is not your fault. And it's not Martin's fault, either. Don't you ever think it is, because it isn't. You are _my boy_, and I love you. And I am so, so proud of you. You be who you are, because you are wonderful."

Jack starts crying again, and she can only make out the word "bad."

"No, honey. No, you are not bad. Sometimes you make mistakes, but you have such a good heart. I see how good you are on the inside, and I see you have a lot of love. Honey, my baby, you are a _child_. And you are not responsible for anything bad that happens. You didn't do anything bad." She hugs Jack tighter. "No, honey, it's okay. It's okay. I will love you forever. No matter what, you will always be my baby. You'll be my baby when you're forty. You'll be my baby 'till I die. And I will always, always love you, and I will always be proud of you, Jack, you're my son. And nothing can change that. Even if I get mad at you sometimes. Even if you _do_ do something bad. Even if something bad happens to me and you're not there to help me, you are my boy, and I will love you _forever_."

And finally Jack calms down. He's cried a wet patch onto the front of Kelly's dress, and he's limp as a damp rag, and he whispers into her neck that he wants to go home now, please.

She kisses him on the forehead and hands him a tissue. "Okay. Okay, you just sit tight while I get Martin and tell everyone goodbye for you, and we'll go. Do you want some water? Crying makes me thirsty." He nods, and she pours him a small glass. Steps into the living room to tell Tess that they're going to go, and stops dead.

Because Brendan is sitting on the couch looking absolutely _wrecked_, with both Tommy and Tess holding on to him. Shoulders shaking, face in his hands. She can feel her mouth fall into an O of surprise and worry, and then Tommy looks up and catches her eye, and his gaze is full of so much heat that afterward she doesn't know why she didn't just go up in flames right then.

And then Tess gets up and comes to her, hugs her. "Sweetie, you just made three grown men cry," she says in Kelly's ear, very softly. "And me." Kelly hugs her back, seeing past Tess' shoulder to Tommy and Bren with their heads together, Tommy's arm around his brother, and Mr. Conlon standing looking out the window with his shoulders bowed in a way that suggested great weight on his heart too.

"I think we're gonna go," she says back just as softly. "Jack is worn out. But thank you, thank you so much for today. I love you, Tess."

"I love you too," Tess says to her, and then Kelly sends Jack out through the garage so he won't have to see anybody; he hates for people to see him cry. She goes to the back yard and collects Martin, who doesn't want to go home, but she just picks him up and carries him, and Emily and Rosie trail her back into the house, and now there's a moil of people just moving around, probably to disguise Brendan's emotion, so she blows kisses to everyone and tells Tess she'll see her tomorrow morning.

O ) O ) O )

Paddy settles in the big recliner in the living room, out of the way of most everybody else. He's still not accustomed to being with so many people in the house. The mill's different, there are plenty of people around there, but the difference is everybody's busy and working, and not trying to talk.

Time was, Paddy could tell stories with the best of them, but part of that was because of the way you can hold people at bay with stories, or draw them in, depending on your purpose, while you remain in control. He can still tell a version of the old folktale "The Merrow Wife" that would break your heart – and maybe he's even better at telling that tale now, now that he knows what it's like to lose a good woman.

He'd once charmed Mary Rose Riordan, that lissome girl just out of Catholic school with the quietly adoring eyes and the full mouth ripe for passion, with stories. Had sat on the end of Brendan's bed and told stories to his preschool-age sons, seeing their eyes get big and blinky as they tried not to fall asleep, tried not to miss the end. Those had been the good days.

But the war stories – those he'd _never_ told. He thinks now that was a mistake; they'd bubbled their poison away down inside him, and the whiskey had been a vicious antidote. Bombard the sick person with chemotherapy and radiation to kill the cancer, set a wolverine to catch a fox in the chicken yard. What the whiskey had done, on top of the war, was to blight him entirely, turn him into the kind of person who hurt the people he loved best.

Paddy knows that he's on sufferance with his sons, that they are still in some sense waiting for him to screw up and be the dad they remember, the one they still fear at least a little bit. The one who did everything wrong, who _wasn't there_ in the ways his family needed him, and who _was there_ in ways they definitely didn't need.

Tommy, despite his initial hostility and distance, has actually been easier to deal with. They'd had more in common early on, more time spent together even if it wasn't personal time. There was more to start from. Little Tommy, so eager to please, so easy to teach... and Paddy's always thought Tommy was more like him than Brendan, who had to _damn analyze_ everything, but he's seen now that Tommy's got his own stubborn endurance, and maybe Mary Rose had given that to both their sons. Tommy might have _said,_ "This doesn't mean anything," when they'd first started training together, but Paddy's known all along about the father-shaped hole in Tommy's heart. It matches the son-shaped holes he carried for so long. And Paddy knows, too, whose arms had wrapped around him when he'd gotten so drunk there in Atlantic City, a man whose sons had absolutely no use for him. Who'd cleaned up the room and poured out the whiskey, who'd tucked him in and smoothed his hair. (And he remembers, too, who had been left alone and trainerless to face his brother in the cage. Yet one more reason for Paddy's guilt.)

Brendan, he thinks, is making a conscious effort to forgive, to build on the small foothold of relationship they've developed over the last couple of years. Seeing his sons in the cage together – he'd finally seen Brendan's strength and acknowledged it. Just a nod, but it was a validation Brendan had craved, a way for Paddy to tell him, "I'm proud of you, son," without the awkward words, a way to say "I was wrong about you, you're the hell of a fighter and I should have paid more attention when you were younger. You're just as worthy as your brother."

That dreadful hungover evening two years ago, Paddy had wanted to stop the fight then, wanted to comfort his younger son and congratulate the elder, and if he'd really been "just some old vet" Tommy trained with, he could have done that. The fight was essentially over. Tommy was done for with that shoulder, he'd seen that immediately, and the sooner Tommy got medical treatment the better. But Paddy had also known, without even knowing _how _he knew, that if he stopped it – if he kept them from finding their own resolution – he'd lose both of them and they'd lose each other, forever.

What he sees now in his sons are the qualities he'd missed before: Brendan's endurance, his toughness, his brains. Tommy's sweetness and his stubborn loyalty. They're more alike than he'd ever realized.

_Oh, Mary Rose_, he thinks, _I wish you could see this. I wish you were still here. I would have loved you so much more now._

He sips his lemonade and hears the clamor of children banging the door on their way inside, or maybe outside, who knows? It's a sound that would have sent him – _did_ send him – raging about noise, back in the bad old days. Car doors slam outside, and through the window he sees that little Kelly girl leaving in her rattletrap tin can of a Japanese car.

She's a cute little thing, what Paddy thinks of as very feminine. Soft all over, and motherly, but fierce as a badger. And (despite the dancing, despite her older boy's tears) her boys aren't growing up girly, he can see that. He'd always secretly worried that Brendan, under his mother's nose-in-a-book influence, would be girly. And Tommy's childhood interest in babies had worried the hell out of Paddy. But he doesn't worry about that now: his sons are _men_. Even if there's a fourteen-year-old boy looking out of Tommy's eyes every now and then.

Tommy walks in from the front door. "Hey, Pop. I think there's a Pirates game on, wanna watch it?"

"Sure. Got a series at the Cubs, game's probably in progress already."

"Got a shot at that one, the Cubs ain't so hot this year," Tommy says, and flips on the TV. "Need some more lemonade?"

"Naw, I'm good." And Paddy sits there for a minute more, watching second baseman Neil Walker on deck, waiting for a Cubs pitching change, taking practice swings, before he says what he's thinking. "I like your girl."

Tommy, in the process of getting comfortable on the couch, goes still. There's a pause before he moves again. "She ain't my girl, Pop."

This is one of the ways that Tommy _is_ like his old man: the capacity for self-deception. How many years did Paddy pretend to himself that Mary Rose hadn't known about the other women, the girls from the bar? "Come on, Tom, I've seen the way you look at her." Yeah, he'd seen Tommy looking like her like she was an angel and the best joke he'd ever heard, a hot fudge sundae and a Playboy centerfold, all wrapped up in one. Sweetness wrapped around heat and hunger. Another thing Tommy's always had is passionate devotion, but that's from his mother as well. And a bolt of pain goes through Paddy's chest as he sees young Mary Rose's face in his memory, looking at him in just that sort of way, like he was her whole life.

He turns his head to look at his son directly. Tommy's face is set, staring straight at the TV, those Riordan lips pressed tight together before he parts them to answer. "Yeah, well, I ain't sayin' I don't think she's something special. But she damn well better not be looking back, is all I can say."

Paddy shakes his head a little. "Nothin' wrong with that if she does."

And Tommy turns to look at Paddy full-on. "Were you not payin' attention, Pop? When you were sitting at the table with tears in your eyes, listening to her talk to her son? Her ex-husband used to beat the shit out of her. Sound familiar?" They just look at each other for a minute, and then he adds, "She's just braver than Mom ever was."

And Paddy feels a tightening in his stomach, waiting for Tommy to throw the next verbal punch, the way he does when he's feeling vulnerable. He doesn't have to wonder where Tommy picked up _that_ technique. Thanks to AA, Paddy's been trying not to use it. Has been trying to hear people out without volleying back. It doesn't always work, but he's gotten a lot of practice at biting his tongue and just listening.

Tommy's voice sounds almost as bitter as it did back at the house, back when he was "just passing through," and shocked as hell to find his dad sober. "Yeah, that'd be just great, her being afraid that I'd pop her jaw the first minute she said something I didn't like. And she's mouthy, Kelly is." The corners of his mouth curve up briefly, as if he's thinking of something funny.

Paddy takes a deep breath. "You're a better person than your old man, Tommy. I know that much."

Tommy shakes his head. "No. I'd be the worst person in the world for her. I'm too much like _you_," he says, and there it is, the gut punch Paddy's been expecting. His son, the one who physically runs away instead of diving into the bottle and the bar women the way Paddy always did when things got tough, gets up from the couch and heads for the back of the house. It's still sound technique: strike hard at the vulnerable spot, and pull back when you've drawn blood, lest you get likewise bloodied.

Paddy looks down at his hands and nods. He deserves this. Always has. And he'll take whatever he has to take, to keep his sons' hearts open to him.

But Tommy's footsteps stop in the kitchen, and come back to the living room, slower and softer. Paddy hears him sigh in the doorway. "Sorry, Pop."

"It _is_ my fault," he says. "I'm sorry, Tommy." He waits until Tommy sits back down, and then he says, "But I mean it, you're a better person than I am. You don't have to make my mistakes."

"I don't wanna hear any more about it," Tommy says softly. "And I ain't got time for girls right now anyway."

"Okay," Paddy agrees, and starts talking about Russell Martin's chances of getting on base instead of Tommy's love life. But it's a matter of time, if you ask Paddy. Way they look at each other, it's a fire about to catch. And whether Tommy knows it or not, Paddy suspects that she is his girl, after all.

_A/N: My youngest son (he's now 12) is prone to asking for hugs after getting in trouble; he needs the physical reassurance. Thanks for the inspiration, Taz._


	24. Chapter 24: Tattoo

**Chapter 25: Tattoo**

**As always, only my own characters belong to me. I make no claim on the intellectual property associated with the movie.**

The night of the birthday party he calls her, not texting first. "Hey. You really did a number on Brendan."

She sighs. "I know. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to ruin things."

"Everybody knows you didn't mean to, and you didn't ruin things. We were okay after you left." It's true, there was a softness to the air even after she'd gone, even after Pop had said what he did. Which is, to be honest, just killing Tommy. He hates being that transparent to Pop, _hates_ it.

And he is still not okay with Pop, not entirely. He and Pop have made their peace over their own relationship. What Pop did to him, and what he said to hurt Pop, that's done and forgiven. What Pop did to Mom? He's still furious over that. Nothing to be done about it except to forgive him for that too, and Tommy's not ready for that yet. It feels like saying "no big deal, you get a free pass for using your hands like weapons on a woman, but she's dead so it doesn't matter."

Kelly, of course, has no idea what he's thinking. She says, "You sure you don't mind coming with me? To get my tattoo? I've already made my appointment."

"You couldn't stop me," he says. Truth. Tank doors can't stop him.

"I figured that," she says, and laughs. And after all the crazy of the day, he's suddenly unwound, and Pop doesn't matter so much, and all he can feel is the soft press of her lips on his cheek, way back near his ear, and he spends the rest of the fifteen minutes on the phone _not_ thinking about what her lips would feel like elsewhere on his body. Like his neck. Or his collarbone, where she touched him the other day. Or, you know... _elsewhere_. Like, lower. Way lower.

_No, no, no. Can't think about that._

O : O : O :

Kelly's made an appointment for 7:30 pm at Inkspot Studios downtown on Thursday, so he gets out of the gym early enough to have a quick shower and dress in something other than what he'd wear to work out in. After dinner he bikes over to her house to meet her in time to go.

Tess had some thing going on with her girlfriends from yoga tonight, and Brendan was just barely going to get back in time to be with Em and Rosie after his second conditioning run of the day with the wrestling team, so Kelly has had to find another babysitter. When he walks in the door, there's a neighborhood teenager in the kitchen with the boys, a tall skinny black girl with a terrific smile, who seems to be having a great time allowing Martin to load up his Tonka dump truck with napkins, placemats, and utensils and drive the truck into the dining room so he and Jack can set the table.

"Hey, guys." He ruffles Jack's hair and leans down to inspect the forks wrapped in napkins in Martin's truck. "This your truck, dude? Nice."

"Hi, Tommy." Martin is nonchalant and focused on his job, but Jack apparently feels like talking.

"I've got a tattoo," he says, showing off his left forearm, where he's drawn in black marker what might, by a vigorous stretch of the imagination, be a bird with wings outstretched. "It's a eagle because my dad was in the army. Mom's getting a tattoo," he informs Tommy, in the grave manner of an old-school newscaster. "Not as big as yours, though. A small one."

"Right, I know."

"She says it might hurt at first. Did yours ones hurt?" Jack wants to know. He seems worried, and it's unclear whether he doesn't like the idea of marks on his mother, or whether he doesn't like the idea of her feeling pain.

"Some of them did."

"Why'd you get 'em then?"

"I really wanted them. I think your mom wants that symbol on her arm to help her think of good stuff."

The teenager is looking at Tommy expectantly, waiting for a break in his conversation with Jack, so he turns to her and says, "Hey, I'm Tommy. I'm driving Kelly back from her appointment."

At that moment, Kelly comes in wearing tan shorts and a low scoop-neck tee in a shade of warm pink that makes her look like a flower. Her cheeks are pink and she looks excited. "Tamera, you got everything under control? Good, looks like you do. We should be home by nine, I would think."

"That's fine," Tamera says. "Good luck, and I'll see you when you get back."

"Kiss me now, guys," Kelly says, holding out her arms to Jack. "You need to be in bed by 8:15, Jack-man, and Martin by 8:00. You got it?" Kelly kisses her boys goodnight, exacts promises that they will eat dinner and obey Tamera and be in bed on time, and then they're out the door.

"I'll drive there," Kelly says as they're walking out to her beat-up blue Honda, "but you would you mind driving back?"

"No problem. Hey, you look nice." It's embarrassing to admit, but now that he knows about her shoe thing, he always has to look at her feet now. Today it's those silver sandals again, and her toenails are hot pink again.

"Thanks." She smiles at him. "I was just about to say that you do, too. It's not often I see you in anything other than track pants and a t-shirt." He can feel his ears get hot. Maybe he overdid it, although it's only a short-sleeve dark blue buttoned shirt he didn't bother to iron because he thought it would look like he was trying too hard, plus his gray cargo shorts. And some product in his hair, but just a little.

"So tell me about this tat, okay?"

"Okay." She hands him a small printout of a design as they get into the car. "It's called a koru, a Maori symbol from New Zealand. Sort of based on a curled up fern head, but it is a big recurrent element in Maori art and tattoos. It stands for life and hope and new beginnings. Personal growth and awakening, that sort of thing. I think it's beautiful."

He nods, looking at it. "I like it."

The Inkspot doesn't look too busy when they head in, and it's well-lit and cheerful, with bright teal walls serving as a backdrop for the photos all tat studios seem to put up to advertise their work. The middle-aged guy in the chair gets up and greets Kelly. "Hey, you got here a little early. Awesome. You got your image with you?" She nods and hands him her piece of paper. "Yeeeaahh, great. The fern spiral thing. 'Bout an inch and a half square. I remember. Yeah. And you know where you want it?"

"Inner wrist. On the left, just down from the crease there." Tommy's been trying to talk her out of that spot – it's a good accessible area, sure, and lots of people get ink there, but he's touched her there, and that skin is really soft, so his best guess is that it's going to hurt worse than she thinks.

"You sure? Lots of blood vessels there. Skin's thin, so the ink can bleed sometimes, though I have a delicate touch and I don't usually have that issue. You know it's going to be a fairly painful place, right?" The guy's got plenty of tattoos himself, as most artists do, and his arms boast some impressive sleeves, mostly worked in black but with some color accents.

"That's where I want it," Kelly says. "I did okay with my last tattoo," and she and the guy go on talking size and exact placement, and she gives him her gift certificate. Meanwhile, Tommy walks around looking at the photos on the walls, judging the quality of the artwork. It's pretty good, though not really world-class. On the other hand, that's probably not going to be necessary given the simple lines of the image Kelly wants. He'd seen all this when he'd come in to buy her gift card, but he'd been in a rush and not seen much past the fact that these guys seem to know what they're doing. Looks like at least two artists working here, he guesses, looking at the photos: one likes to use lots of color and shading, with artsy, realistic-looking results that look a lot like airbrushing, and the other is more focused on black ink, either bold and vivid tribals or sharply drawn small pieces with some shading for depth.

He walks over to where Kelly and the tattoo guy are talking. "Hey, I'm Dan," the tattoo guy says. "That's a nice tribal I see there on your right arm, where'd you get it done?" He rolls his sleeve up so Dan can get a better look at it, tells the guy he'd gotten it in San Diego, and they talk tats for a few minutes. It turns out that Dan's the artist who did the black work, not the color stuff. That's good. It's nicely done. Dan had not been working when he'd come in before; it had been a youngish woman with dyed red hair and several piercings, maybe the other artist.

"You looking to get some more work done?" Dan asks.

"Sometime maybe, but not now. I'm moral support tonight."

"Oh. That reminds me," Kelly says, and hands him her keys and wallet. "Here. And thanks for driving back."

"No problem."

They head to the back room, where Dan the tattoo guy settles Kelly in one of those dentist-type chairs, which is a luxury Tommy's rarely had when getting ink. "People tend to relax better in these," Dan says. "And I had just finished setting out all my supplies when you got here, so we're ready to rock. Now, the left arm?" He extends her left arm onto a small medical table and straps it down with a padded restraint, to keep her from moving it. Puts on medical gloves. Shows her the fresh needle and plugs it in, cleans her inner wrist, then does the design tracery onto the skin.

"You nervous?" Tommy asks her. "Did you remember to eat something?" She nods to both. "Well, here's to your new life then." She smiles, and takes a deep breath as Dan finishes all the prep work and asks if she's ready.

"As I'll ever be." She closes her eyes and tilts her head back. "I don't like to watch the needle," she explains.

"You're a _nurse_. You probably give people shots all the time," Tommy says, incredulous.

"I know, but I don't mind watching the needle going into other people's skin. Just mine." He shakes his head and sits down in the straight chair next to the reclining one just as Dan starts the first outline stroke, and Kelly hisses her breath in through her teeth. "Ow. Ow. _Ow,_ dammit, that really hurts. And please don't say 'I told you so.' _Ow._"

Dan looks up and meets his gaze with amusement for just a second, before continuing. Yeah, okay, it's sort of funny because they'd both warned her, but watching the expressions on her face, it's not so funny because it obviously hurts. She's doing the breathing thing to help control the pain – in through the nose, short, and out through the mouth long, Lamaze breathing – but there's still a tear rolling down her cheek, and every so often her face contorts. Those odd expressions sort of remind Tommy of something, but he can't quite place it.

"Can you stop a second?" Kelly asks Dan, and he moves the needle off.

"I'll stop one time," he says. "It's actually easier if I don't start and stop, but you go ahead and get you a deep breath, and then we'll get going again. Deal?"

"Yep," she says, and just breathes deeply for a couple of minutes. "I can handle this. I can do this. Okay, I'm good."

So Dan starts again, and Kelly does that pain-management breathing, but even with all that, she's biting her lip and making faces at the pain. "Relax," Dan reminds her.

"Slow even breaths," Tommy says. "Look – here, gimme your hand. Squeeze mine if you need to." She flings her right hand in his direction without even opening her eyes to see where he is, just trusting that he'll catch it, and he thinks how much like Rosie she is in that way, just trusting people. Or maybe she just trusts him.

Then she makes this little moan deep in the back in her throat, and something clicks and he recognizes the thing that's been in the back of his mind: the moan, the facial contortions, the lip-biting, all of that is a whole lot like the way a woman looks when she's losing her shit in the middle of sex. Once he's seen that, he can't un-see it, and then he has to adjust the way he's sitting on the chair. Because he wants that from her so bad, so bad... has been trying not to imagine it for weeks now. Has been trying not to let himself feel what it would be like to hold her and sink into her, what it would be like to have her legs wrapped around his waist and her head thrown back and those damn noises she makes coming out of her mouth.

_Does not need your shit, Conlon. Be a friend._

"This is _so_ much worse than on my shoulder blade," she says, a catch in her voice.

"I warned you."

"You did." She goes back to her deep breathing thing, but she doesn't seem to be able to keep it up very long at a time.

"How ya doing?" He squeezes her hand a little, trying to distract her.

"M'okay." Her eyes are still closed, but she bites her lip again, and it's driving him _crazy_, watching her make all these faces that look so much like orgasm, and maybe if he were a truly good person he'd just sit there and hold her hand and be a friend, and not think about what she'd feel like, moving naked underneath him, saying his name because she would, she _would _do that.

He is not, actually, that good a person. He knows that.

To hell with it. "Got an idea," he says, lightly, because he doesn't want her to know it's a thing he's been fighting off for weeks now. "You need a distraction."

Her eyes pop open, and she says, "Do not even _think_ about telling me to 'go to my happy place.' This hurts _so_ much worse than – " she hisses a breath in through her teeth. "Sorry."

"Try to relax," the tattoo guy says, dabbing a bead of blood. "I'm about a third of the way done with the outlining. I know this hurts because there are lots of blood vessels and nerves here, but if you relax your muscles it won't be so bad."

"That's what my OB said. He was wrong," she says darkly, and Tommy stifles a laugh. "I mean, this is not even close to childbirth, but still. _Ow_." She turns back to Tommy and demands, "Okay, distract me then. Tell me jokes or something."

"I don't tell jokes. Thought this might work, though." And he leans over, putting his face close to hers. "Close your eyes and breathe." Her eyes widen a little, and then her eyelids come down over them.

And he kisses her. Gently, sweetly, just the soft pressure of lips on lips, as slowly as he can, and when he finally pulls back to gauge her response she simply lifts her chin a tiny bit, inviting more. As he kisses her again the tension goes out of her and the tattoo guy says, "Hey, whatever you're doing, it's working. You relaxed." So the kisses go on, soft and tender and way sweeter than tonsil hockey with Carolyn Hillhouse under the bleachers at Pittsburgh Allderdice High School, and more addictive than tongue tango with any girl he ever met in a bar. Kelly tenses up once more, inhaling sharply, as the tattoo guy apologizes, saying, "Sorry about that, you must have a nerve near the surface there." And then the tip of her tongue traces across the inner edge of Tommy's top lip, the kisses go miles deep, and the world is just _gone_. It's possible that he wouldn't notice if the building collapsed around them.

It's only when somebody taps him on the shoulder and says, "All done," that he reluctantly comes up for air, mind-whacked and aching from chest to groin. He looks at Kelly, and she looks back at him, and her lips are so pink and her eyes so starry that he just wants to go back to where they were before. "You want to see?" Dan asks.

"Oh. Yes," Kelly says, and, turns her head to look. "Wow, that looks great. That is beautiful, just what I wanted." Tommy, fuzzy-headed from the kissing, blinks until her wrist comes into focus. The tat _is _beautiful – a spiral with graceful curves that looks like an unfurling fern head, delicately shaded in black. The whole process has taken around ten minutes, maybe twelve. The tattoo guy goes through over the aftercare process with Kelly as he's bandaging her wrist and then they're able to leave.

On the way home, Tommy finds a Tom Petty song on the radio for her, and as she's singing "Running Down a Dream," along with it, he's trying to figure out what the storm inside his chest means. Is this what falling in love feels like? A cold chill runs down his spine, making him shudder, and she stops singing. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah. Just a chill." He can't describe the feeling, even to himself, except as a storm. Pieces of memories whirl around his mind like snowflakes, or like sand in the Shamal, as the Kurds still call a summer wind: Kelly's wild emotional shifts. The crystal clarity of her eyes, the Cupid's bow curve of her lips, the sweet roundness of her butt. The softness of her hair. The way she just seems to know what he's thinking. The sweet way she takes care of people. The weird click at the base of his spine when they'd been sitting on the floor of his room, looking into each other's eyes, when something inside his head had said, _This one, you idiot_.

She's honest and vulnerable and real and she makes him laugh and he wants to keep every bad thing away from her. She understands how he feels without his even saying a word, but somehow he can say words to her and they don't feel stupid coming out of his mouth. And he wants _so bad_ to be inside her that it's like pain not having her, like an itch under his skin, like starving on the street outside a bakery. She has so much hope and goodness, they radiate like sunshine out of her face.

So maybe this is what falling in love is like.

So maybe this was how Brendan was feeling about Tess, way back when he was sixteen-going-on-seventeen and Mom's plan to leave "someday" suddenly became both concrete and out-of-time desperate. He'd never understood before how Brendan could have been so caught up in a girl who wasn't even family, but now it seems rational. "What, now? _Now?_ I can't leave her!" Brendan had said, appalled. "I can't. I _can't!_" With every new turn of his life Tommy understands his older brother a little better, and for the first time he starts to wonder if the ten years he spent in the Corps had really been spent running away from love, family, growing up – everything _except_ physical danger.

So maybe he's been lying to himself all along, this is love and it hurts. So. Fucking. Good.

And it seems that he still runs as a first line of defense, because right now he wants to be anywhere but where she is. She's too close, and it feels like heat on a sunburn, and also it's not doing his hard-on any good. He has to think about this shit, get his head around it.

So when he parks her clunker Corolla on the street in front of her house, he's already making plans to leave. But she asks him to come in and make sure she does the aftercare right, since her mother had taken care of the one on her shoulder and she hadn't been able to see what to do, and it's so hard to say no to her that he winds up saying, _Sure. Okay_.

She pays Tamera the teenager and checks on the boys in bed. "I need a drink," she says, coming back downstairs to where he's been standing in the living room looking at the framed photos on the walls and sniffing the air, because the whole house smells like her perfume – flowers and leather, sweet and tough in equal measures. She mixes a rum-and-Coke with Captain Morgan's from one of those airline mini bottles and drinks half of it right away, tilting her head back as the alcohol hits her. "Whew. That and some Advil ought to help." She smiles at him, but it's like he's seeing her through frosted glass and he just wants to get out, to go clear all the fuzzy feelings away. It's not too late to hit the gym for a couple of rounds with the bag, and he's starting to need that because his chest keeps aching.

And then she goes to the sink in the kitchen and says, "So I'm supposed to, what, run a little bit of water over this?"

This he could do in his sleep by now. "Just a trickle. Lukewarm. That should make the bandage easy to get off. And run your fingers over the ink very gently to wash away that sticky yellow stuff that should be coming out."

"Lymph," she says. He nods.

This can't be love, because she's dealt with a whole lot of shit in her life, and she doesn't need his.

It can't be love. Because he is the _worst _choice in the entire world for someone whose husband used to beat her up.

Can't be. Because he will fuck up her entire life, just when she's getting it back to where _she_ wanted it. And it's killing him.

"Now what?" she says, turning from the sink with her wrist wet. "I drip-dry?"

"You can. Or pat it dry with a towel. Then the A&D. Then leave it alone." His voice comes out scratchy, past that big lump in his throat, but she's focused on what she's doing and doesn't notice.

"Okay." She gets out a clean dish towel and gently pats her wrist, then reaches for the tube of ointment. "Just a tiny bit, right?"

He watches her put the small dab of ointment on her wrist, and although he knows he shouldn't, he walks to her at the sink and takes her wrist in his hand. "Let me." He rubs the clear ointment over her skin there, as lightly as he can, and he doesn't look at her face because that would be too much, and the huge bubble of need inside him is getting bigger all the time. "There. Done. And I gotta go."

He does not say _I love you_. Has to literally bite his tongue to keep it in.

He hears her thank him for going with her, for the support, and he hears her say something about she'd love for him to come over for dinner next week, but the need bubble has reached his ears and everything is fuzzy, and if he doesn't hit something soon he's going to fucking explode.

Once on the bike, he's gone hell-for-leather for Soul of a Lion Gym, never mind that he's not dressed for it. There's some spare stuff in his locker. Jose's there late, and he asks if Tommy wants to spar a little. Just for fun, nothing serious, man.

"Naw, man. Mood I'm in, I'd probably kill you."

Jose laughs, as if Tommy's making a joke.

He wasn't joking. He does his best to try and murder the heavy bag, and all the while his brain is going over memories of what Mom looked like after any one of Pop's multiple bad spells. Broken nose, split lip, bruised cheek. Broken arm. Hair torn out. Dress torn. Bruised arm, bruised ribs, bruised back. Split lip again. Rainbow bruise around her eye.

_I hate you, Pop. I hate what you did to her, what you did to us. I hate what you did to me, because sometimes it's like I **am **you. And I would rather jump off the fucking bridge than be you, and hurt the people I love. Because what you said, about me being a better person than you? That's wishful thinking. I'm not, I'm not. _

He hits the bag viciously, repeatedly, until his arms feel like sandbags hanging off his shoulders and Jose's ready to lock up. He bikes back to Brendan's, but when he gets there the adrenaline's still running, so he keeps going, riding around the same six blocks and going nowhere near Marshall Street, until his legs start to feel as heavy as his arms do. Only then does he go back to his brother's house, take a cold shower, and slide into his empty bed.

There's a text message from Kelly on his phone, sent at 10:43 pm:

_Hey, thanks again for tattoo and moral support and pain relief. :) you ok? You looked sort of strange when you left. Call if you want. If not, good night._

No, he can't call. He'll wind up doing something stupid, like telling her the truth. Or, God forbid, going over there and tossing rocks at her window until she lets him in. Alone with her in her house, at night, with this feeling ripping at his guts, he doesn't trust himself not to just take her up against the wall, rough and desperate, _c'mon baby make it hurt so good_, whether she wants it or not. Which, if he wasn't such a whirlpool of worthless achy confusion, he'd be able to tell, but he can't. He doesn't even know how she feels about him.

Sleep comes late, and it comes ugly, with bad dreams.

_**A/N: Hey, I'm thinking of getting a tattoo myself. Husband says no. Kids say no. My mother is horrified, but then she's horrified that her other two children have tattoos. My sister has this awesome blackwork thing from the Book of Kells on her back, between her shoulder blades, and my brother has... gosh, like twenty? Mostly nautical-looking things, like swallows and anchors and compass roses, most with color on them. His are hard to miss.**_

_**The koru symbol really does mean new life and hope, symbolizes creation, and it is beautiful. You see stylized koru patterns everywhere in NZ, partly as a tribute to Maori culture and partly because it is just way cool. New Zealand Air, for example, has koru patterns as part of its logo.**_

_**And: bwa ha ha, Teh K-I-S-S-I-N-G showed up in a chapter called "Tattoo." You can't take these titles too seriously. :)**_


	25. Chapter 25: When the World Goes Away

**Chapter 25 : When the World Goes Away**

_**A/N: Um... warning. This one's rated M for a reason. Not particularly graphic , but it ain't all marshmallow fluff either. **_

_**Researchy note here: Tommy's war story is based on an account I read by a Vietnam war vet. Maybe this stuff doesn't happen anymore, but I wouldn't bet on it.**_

The dreams were hell last night. It was Lewis and Taylor and Torres and the Iraqi girl first, and then a long pointless one about doing patrol in the desert wearing gear that weighed eight hundred fucking pounds and none of the buildings had any doors, and he was sitting in the Humvee desperate to step out and relieve himself, and that one finally woke him up to realize that he actually did have to pee. After that, it was one about blood on Mom's kitchen floor again – just blood, no Mom, and he didn't know where she was. And, finally, the little Iraqi girl again, just the way she'd looked when he'd closed her eyes.

When he's running in the morning he feels bad, like he's not getting enough air. Everything aches, just a little, all over. Maybe he's getting sick. Maybe he should lay off and go drink some orange juice. Frank's always nagging at him to get more carbs in, and OJ is pretty much all carbs. Or maybe all this emotional crap is messing with his health.

Fuck it. If it hurts, he's not in shape, that's all. So he runs a little longer, even though what he really wants is to go back to bed. And he drinks eight ounces of orange juice, too, because Mom would have made him get some vitamin C.

At the gym, he submits to the whole urine-and-blood-testing deal that Frank insists on with Dr. Fowler, and then he does some footwork drills with Adam, Frank's new college intern who's working there for the summer. (_Interns_, for Chrissake. Frank is too fancy for his own good.) Adam grew up on jiu-jitsu and he's not a total waste of space, but Tommy's got about thirty pounds on him so the mirroring exercise is a little funny. Tommy actually trips over his own foot once, and once he misses a step because for just a second it felt like his right leg was actually _not there_. Some weird thing going on with a nerve, maybe, because after that it's fine.

What's not fine is his head, which is a confusing jumble of all the dreams from last night plus the taste of Kelly's mouth. He keeps seeing Lewis' sly face under his helmet, and Taylor's face caked with dust and sneering. Torres pulling his pants back up so fast and _his_ face terrified and guilty, and the whole sorry little house littered with bodies... who would ever have guessed that it would hold so many people? He is so sick of seeing blood on floors.

In the afternoon, he's supposed to be sparring with Marco, and he's having the hardest time not giving in to frustration and simply taking Marco's head off instead of working the same kind of footwork thing he was drilling with Adam earlier, the way he's supposed to. He loses focus twice and swings a little close to Marco's jaw, and when the sparring bout is over Frank just sort of collars him and takes him into the office. "What the hell is wrong with you?" Frank says, shoving him down in the office chair and looming over him. "You've got no focus today."

"I don't feel so great," he admits. "Kind of achy. Didn't sleep well."

"Knock off the rest of the day, okay? You don't look good either, you've got those circles under your eyes again. Go home. Take a nap. Eat some hefty carbs with some fat. I mean it, get Tess to make you some mac-n-cheese with whole wheat pasta. You lost two pounds this week, and you should be bulking up right now. Are you getting your rest?"

"I need a fight, Frank," he blurts out. "I need..."

"No, you don't. I don't want you out there letting everybody get a look at you. I want you being the dark horse again. Everybody thinks they know how you fight, and they have no idea, and I want to keep it that way."

"Doesn't have to be anything big. Don't have to use my own name, either." He _needs_ this. He needs it pretty bad, he can't do much more than he is already.

"I don't think so," Frank says. "You need a rest."

"I need a_ fight_. I need to get some frustration out, and I can't do it here. You want me to mangle Marco? Or Jose? I don't wanna do that."

Frank just looks at him a minute. "You seeing a counselor?"

"Counselors are full of shit."

"A lot of them might be. But I think this frustration would get better if you could get it out with words instead of your body. Tommy, seriously, I'm starting to think you're overtraining right now. You need to lay off a little."

"Let me get a fight or two in, and I can stop training so much."

Frank blinks at him. Does his considering face. Sighs. "And what if you get hurt? There goes your shot at Sparta."

"I'm not gonna get hurt. I'm a beast. They won't even know what hit 'em." Frank just stares at him, but he doesn't back down. "C'mon. You said it yourself, I'm indefatigable."

And Frank finally laughs. "I gotta quit tellin' Brendan how good you are. Okay. There are always those little smoker fights, we can get you into a couple of those. That do?"

"Anything."

"What name you want to fight under?" Tommy shrugs. He doesn't care. "Okay, I'll pick something suitably dumb-fighting-Irish for you," Frank says, getting an evil sort of glint in his eye. "With a nickname. And look here, you can't do this no walkout music stuff again. You did that already, and it was memorable. The tattoos are bad enough, they'll probably get you recognized anyway. People who go to these smoker fights, they wanna see blood and they want all the macho drama and the trash-talking extras. You need music. You want me to pick that too?"

He nods. Frank rolls his head around on his neck, like _this goes against my better judgment, but have it your way_. "Okay. I'll arrange it. Now go home. Take a nap."

So he goes home, tells Tess about Frank's mac-n-cheese order, then apologizes for it. Spins each kid around by their hands, gets hugged, takes a shower, and collapses on his bed. He doesn't think he'll actually sleep, but he does. In fact, he even misses seeing Kelly when she comes to pick up the boys after work, and it's after seven by the time he wakes up, starving.

He spends a long time eating – pork tenderloin, mac-n-cheese, vegetables, a protein shake, three hard-boiled eggs, and half a cantaloupe. Goes out and sits in the treehouse for awhile, thinking about the guys. No flashback this time, but it's still weighing heavy on him. He calls Pilar to check in, see how she's doing, and she says everybody's okay. She's at Manny Jr.'s baseball game and she's a little distracted, so he says good luck to Little Man and he'll call her some other time. He thinks about calling Pop. Doesn't. Thinks about calling Kelly.

Doesn't do that, either. Instead, he puts his head back against the tree and thinks about things he has no right to think about, and so maybe they're kinda porny, but they're keeping his mind off blood and dead bodies, at least.

His phone buzzes with a text message about 9:15. Kelly, of course, asking if he's awake now and feeling better. He holds the phone for a few minutes, getting his mind off Imaginary Naked Kelly and over to Real Friend Kelly, which is admittedly tough because he knows Real Friend Kelly is actually Naked Kelly sometimes, like in the shower _whoa head rush_...

Enough of that. Damn. Real Friend Kelly wears clothes.

When the Kelly in his head manages to stay dressed, he texts her back. _Yeah. Sorry I missed you._

Kelly: _No prob. You got time to talk? Had rough day_.

_Sucks. Me too. I got time._

Kelly: _I know this is asking a lot, but can you come over?_

_Now? _(Damn. Naked Kelly is still too easily accessible via imagination.)

Kelly: _It's ok, you don't have to. I can call._

_What, you need a head rub?_

Kelly: _Sounds very tempting. But mostly I need to be talking to somebody whose face I am looking at._

_OK will bike over._

It's not exactly safe. His control sucks these days, and he wants to kiss her, and he knows he shouldn't. He should stay far away from her, except that he can't.

The porch light's on when he gets there, and she opens the door before he can knock, probably because the kids are already in bed and she doesn't want them woken up. And even with all the crap in his head, all the ways that it hurts to feel so much, he is so glad to see her that he can't help smiling. "Hi," he says.

She's wearing casual, around-the-house clothes – a pink tee that says Small But Mighty and her gray athletic shorts, and her feet are bare, and her hair's messy like she got out of the shower and just let her curls go crazy, and she is beautiful. No makeup. Freckles on her nose. "Hi," she says back, a little subdued, and he just steps close to her as she shuts the door and takes her in his arms. Her head comes up to his shoulder, and she sighs and puts her arms around his waist, rests her head on his chest.

It feels good. There's an ache in the back of his throat, and also one below his waist, so he squeezes her once and lets go. _Stop that_, he orders himself.

"Thanks for coming over," she says. "I am so sick of dealing with this crap from Mike all the time, and then work was just kind of a mess, with a scheduling mixup and I didn't get any lunch until late, and that makes me grouchy anyway, and then the boys were arguing when I picked them up. I think Jack's still jumpy about going to Mike's this weekend. Nothing really big, but everything at once and I just feel sort of stupid and ineffectual and worthless."

"You are anything but that," he says.

"You want some coffee?" she asks, and pushes curls off her face.

"No, I'm having enough trouble sleeping as it is," he admits. "Bad dreams and stuff."

"Yeah?" She stops in her progress toward the kitchen and comes back to where he's standing in front of the door.

"I don't know that you wanna know," he says, and then asks something that's been puzzling him. "Do you wear perfume even when you're not wearing makeup?"

Her cheeks turn pink. "Yeah. I always put it on before I get dressed, so... yeah. Do you want some water?"

"Yeah, thanks." She goes in the kitchen and comes back with two plastic Penn State stadium cups that have to be ten years old at least, and hands him one. "Thank you."

"No, seriously, thank you for coming over. I feel better already." She drinks some water and sits down on the couch next to him. "Do you want to watch Big Bang Theory reruns, or do you want to talk about your dreams?"

"I don't get that show," he says. "Those guys are freaks. Penny, though, I like Penny."

"Baseball?" She picks up the remote, but he reaches over and just takes it out of her hand. For once, he wants to talk.

So he tells her Frank's wacky Zen training is about to itch his eyeballs out, to the point that he's so frustrated he really just wants to go hit somebody. How he _needs that fight_. Tells her about feeling off all day, the aches and the muscle weakness in his calf, and being tired. He tells her about Brendan asking about Mom a couple of weeks ago, and why exactly her little conversation with Jack on Sunday tore Brendan up. He tells her that he's been dreaming about the platoon, about patrols in Iraq.

"Something specific?" she asks. "Or just a whole lot of incidents all mashed together in the dream?"

"Specific." He sighs. Rubs his forehead. "Look, I don't think you need to hear this story."

She tilts her head and looks at him questioningly. "Who else knows this story?"

Nobody else alive knows what happened. Those three guys, and he came in on the end of it, and then he told Manny about it because he wasn't sure he'd made the right decision. "The only one who's still around is me."

"That sounds like heavy baggage to carry all by yourself," she says. "Tell me then. I'll try not to get freaked out or anything."

So he tells her. It had been about three weeks before the bombing, before his whole life went to hell. He'd been well used to patrols by then, not that big a deal, but they'd had a bad one couple months before this incident, one in which some insurgents had gone up on the flat roof of a two-story building, and tossed a handmade grenade, and Luciano had bought it. Tommy had had the big carbine with the sights, so he'd taken out the three guys up there – when they'd gone up to look later, the Iraqis were just teenage boys – and that was bad enough, not something to be happy about. But they'd gotten that little shit Taylor and then Torres in as replacements, so they'd been pretty new. Lewis was an irritation, what with his petty contraband and his constant don't-you-diss-me attitude.

And then _that_ day. They'd had another warning of insurgent activity in this village – Tommy can't remember its name – and they'd gone out on patrol. The Unholy Trinity had been with Fleischman and Faw down at the other end of the village, and Tommy had been busy enough at his end, and he'd still had some area to search when yelling and gunfire had broken out down at Fleischman's end. He'd finished up, gotten McLeod and Shell to cuff the two guys they'd found putting together IEDs and escort them to the Humvee, and he'd taken off to support Fleischman if he needed it.

Fleischman and Faw were fine, talking to an older Iraqi man who was trying to explain something in his limited English, so Tommy had gone looking for bullet holes in walls and found the little house. Opened the door with the barrel of his carbine, looked in. The first thing he'd seen was the blood on the dirt floor, and then he'd seen the four bodies. Shit. What the hell had happened?

Noises in the back room. He'd gone in, carbine first, and seen Lewis standing there, smoking a cigarette cool as dammit. "Whaddya doing in here, Lewis?"

And Taylor, helmet off, sweat and dust and a sneer on his face. "Fuckin' Iraqis," Taylor had said, and then he'd moved, and Tommy had seen Torres, hopping up off the mattress on the floor, off of the girl who lay on it, pulling his pants up in a panic.

Tommy'd looked at the girl, heard her gasping breaths, seen the ominous amount of blood spreading on her black dress, and immediately knelt to see if he could help her, but she'd stopped breathing, right then. The smell of semen in the room told him Torres had been last.

Lewis explained that the girl had opened the door and pulled him in by the arm, and then the younger man had tried to knife him. So he'd shot him, and when the old man and the three women rushed him they'd shot them too, and then pulled the wounded girl in here. The girl looked, in the face, no older than fourteen. But she'd had a woman's body, and in this culture that meant she was an adult. And had acted as one, assuming Lewis wasn't simply lying, which Tommy didn't even want to consider.

The whole family was all dead. No witnesses. No proof. His word as an NCO would stand for something, but if he testified, he'd have to say that the only thing he saw was poor dumb scared-as-shit Torres pulling his pants up. Nothing to be _done. _Knowing was one thing; witnessing was another.

Tommy had stood up then, and called them to attention. He'd looked at Lewis and Taylor, both smug at not having gotten caught, and asked them, "This look much like honor?" And then he'd ripped them all new assholes for grossly immoral behavior unbecoming US Marines, threatened them within an inch of their lives if they ever ever ever did anything like that again, and told them to go report to Fleischman because if he had to look at them for the next week he'd personally kick their teeth down their respective throats. He'd told them he still wasn't sure whether he wouldn't go and burn them to the CO anyway, so they should keep that in mind.

They had left in a subdued straggle, and he'd knelt again. Pulled the dress down over the girl's thighs, closed her eyes with his thumb. Prayed for her, unable to resist his early religious training, even though he knew it wouldn't have been appreciated and wasn't sure whether God was even there to listen anyway. Later, he'd told Manny what was burning him, and Manny had thrown an arm around him and told him he'd done all that was possible.

Now, telling this to Kelly, he stops and searches her face. His eyes have been open while he's been talking, but he's been seeing the past. Now he needs to know: what does she think he should have done?

"It still eats at me," he says. "I still... damn. I don't know."

Her face is calm, though there's that little crease between her eyebrows that she gets when she's thinking hard. "I'm not really up on the rules here. Seems like somebody should have known... but I see your point, how were you going to prove it?" He nods. "And they would probably have, what? Got court-martialed?" He nods. She blows out a breath. "I don't know."

"My conscience was buggin' me pretty hard when we got bombed," he says, and that's another thing he's never told anyone. Part of his brain had been engaged with wondering if he shouldn't just go make a late report and take his own lumps for sitting on the info, and sometimes now he wonders whether he might have been able to get the platoon under better cover if he'd seen the planes earlier.

But they were US planes. No. He wouldn't have done anything differently.

"I think maybe if you'd had time you would have reported it," she says. "I think that would have been the right thing to do, even if you couldn't prove it."

He has suspected all along that he should have done that. "I think it was a moral lapse," he says. "I think it was a huge mistake, and I think it maybe... I don't know... made deserting easier. Made it possible. I'd already fucked up once."

She makes a doubting face. "I don't know. I don't think so. From what you said – you know, after your flashback – I think you might have been concussed at the time and maybe not very capable of making good decisions."

"I managed to help those guys out of the Amtrac," he says.

"That was instinct. This was a decision you had to make, and you maybe weren't in physical shape to do it," she says. She looks right into his eyes. "Tommy. Sometime you have to stop kicking yourself around for that. Because you don't deserve it." She holds out her hands, and he lets her take his.

"I hate it," he says, "that my whole life boils down to that wrong turn."

"That's not your whole life," she says immediately, with great conviction. "I see you looking at your life and seeing how things happened, and figuring out who you really are. Who you really want to be. I see that." She blinks several times, and takes a short deep breath, like she's trying not to tear up. "I see you really using your second chance, and that just... I'm really proud of you."

He can't look at her face anymore without getting emotional, so he looks down at their hands. Watches her thumbs move across his palms, like a caress, and then she's touching his fingers, letting her own fingers move from knuckle to fingernail across each one, and it's unbelievably erotic, and his heart is really banging away inside his chest. Probably loud enough to hear.

"Thanks," he finally says, softly.

"So is that it?" she asks, still playing with his fingers, and he lets her even though it's driving him _crazy_, her perfume and her clean hair and just the closeness of her, and the bare fact that she's touching him. "You don't feel good today, you want to fight instead of train every minute, you're remembering your mom, and you're dreaming about Iraq and wondering if you did the right thing. That's a lot, but is that all?"

Gotta shake off this crap and grow a pair. "I'm fine," he says.

Her fingers go still and then she looks up at him, still holding on to his hand. "Look, Tommy, I have to tell you this." She takes a deep breath. "Please don't lie to me. It's okay to say you don't want to talk about it right now, or even that you don't want to talk about it, period, but don't tell me you're okay when you're really not."

He looks right at her again, right into her eyes, and his heart squeezes into this tiny dense ball. _I am so in love with you I can't see straight. And it's fucking with my head the same way I would fuck up your life if we were together, and I'm so close to just not caring because I am insane with loving you._

What he says is, "I'm fine."

"Okay," she says, and lets go of his hands. He gets up off the couch, because the whole flat-surface thing of it is giving him ideas he really should not be having. "There was something I wanted to talk to _you_ about," she says hesitantly. _Crap._ What fresh hell is this? "Last night," she begins, and stops for a deep breath. "Last night – why did you kiss me?"

_Fuck._ He is a rotten liar. That is, he is perfectly capable of lying, but to people who know him, the lying is obvious. No matter, he'll have to have a go at it. "I was trying to distract you from the pain. You know, helping out?"

She makes a rude buzzer noise. "_Ehhhh_. Wrong answer."

_Fuck._ "Why, did it bother you?"

"No. Or... maybe yes." She makes an impatient face, waves her hand. "Never mind."

"The hell does that mean?"

"Means I liked it too much for my own good, okay? But there has to be a reason why you chose that instead of, like, telling me jokes. Or massaging my hand or something. So what is it?" He's silent, thinking of something to say that isn't the truth, because the truth is so unbearable. "Why, Tommy?"

Maybe a _piece_ of the truth will do. An embarrassing piece. "Okay... look. You were..." This is not getting any less embarrassing. "This is embarrassing."

"Tell me anyway." She crosses her arms, and she's starting to get a mulish look on her face.

It's too embarrassing. And also he's too close to just telling her and fuck the consequences. "No. Forget it."

She gets off the couch, moves to the door and stands in front of it. Arms still crossed. Still looking stubborn. "You're not leaving until you tell me. I know how you duck out."

_Fuck._ "You're not gonna like it." She just narrows her eyes in response and leans back on the door. "Okay. But you asked for this." _God, this is horribly embarrassing._ "Okay, you were... sort of making this... face."

"Face," she repeats, deadpan.

He shrugs, feeling the blood rush to his ears, and then, just a little, to his dick. "Like an orgasm face. It was getting to me." That much had been true.

"Well, that's just fabulous," she snarls. _Oh, great,_ she's pissed off. Telling the truth to women is always a risky thing, in his experience. "As if you even know what mine looks like. So, basically..." she narrows her eyes again, "basically what you're saying is that you were horny."

"Yep." He nods, several times._ Down, boy,_ he says silently and urgently to himself.

"Wanted a little bump and grind. _Horny._" Her voice sounds like a combination of disbelief and sarcasm and disappointed anger. She doesn't sound like herself at all. With Tommy – and with Tess and Brendan, for that matter – she is warm and open and blunt. With Mike she is cold, but also open and blunt. Not right now.

"Told you you wouldn't like it." He shakes his head, lifts his palms in a whatcha-gonna-do, not-my-fault gesture.

"_Wrong answer_," she says again, and there is a kind of fire in her eyes he doesn't understand. "Horny guys do not kiss like_ that._" A sense memory of what it had felt like to kiss her comes over his body like a wave, and he has to close his eyes for a second and control the involuntary shiver. "Yeah, I know," she goes on. "I was there, I know what it was like._ So. _What's the deal?"

_Fuck. _"No deal. Me being, you know, a guy." He shrugs, all unconcerned on the surface, but feeling blood throbbing at the upper edges of his ears (and much lower, too), right on the edge of escaping out the door, just to be somewhere else.

"Oh, there's a deal, all right. Your ears are all red."

This is unbelievable. This one little thing she's noticed this about him, and it feels like being humiliatingly naked in public. He's been embarrassed and feeling like a kid all day, and he finally loses his temper. "Seriously! Whaddya _want_ from me?"

And she loses hers. "I want you to fucking _man up_ and say it!"

"I got nothin'," he shoots right back, thinking of stone walls and bank vaults for protection. She doesn't need to know, she doesn't need to know. If she knows he's just gonna die.

There's a silent moment when she just looks at him. Then sighs. Her shoulders drop, and she steps away from the door, defeated. "I told you not to lie to me. But have it your way. You win." She walks past him and into the kitchen, and with the path to the door uncontested, he practically dives through it and onto the sidewalk.

It's a streetlamp-lit, summer city night outside and the air is full of the smell of honeysuckle and beer and sunscreen and exhaust. He comes to a stop two houses down from Kelly's when he realizes that it feels like he's going the wrong way. _What the hell just happened?_

_I lied to her. How did she know? _

_Man up and say it. And why does "you win" feel like "you just lost"?_

"This is wrong," he says out loud to himself. "Screw it." And he turns around and runs back to 1291, jumping up all three porch steps and opening the door without bothering to knock. "Kelly?" She comes out of the kitchen, and she's crying, and when he sees her his heart clenches up inside his chest, and it just falls out of his mouth: "I love you."

"Tommy," she whispers, and puts her hand up to her mouth, "I tried so hard not to... but I love you too."

Hearing the words does something to him that, as long as he lives, he will never fully understand: there is this sensation of _unlatching_ in his chest, a sweet, stretching pain that rocks him back on his heels and stings his eyes. In all the world, there is nothing but her, and without really knowing how he got to her, she's suddenly in his arms, mouth open and blooming under his, and this sweet ache is so intense he can't imagine existing without it.

Those kisses go on and on, slow and deep and soft, until suddenly they're not slow and soft anymore – they're hot and hungry and fierce and desperate instead. He's very aware of the softness of her breasts against him, and her hand all fisted up in his shirt, and he wants so much more. Then he's pressing her against the wall with his body and tasting her neck, and she moans, and although he knows, vaguely, somewhere in his mind, that this is a Very Bad Idea, this is _way_ rushing it, he can't stop. He's got his hands under her ass, lifting her up so that their groins align. Then she wraps one leg around his and rocks her hips into him, and they both moan this time, and the world goes away again just like it did the first time they kissed, only this time it's so gone they don't even know it's missing.

Somehow they wind up stumbling across the room, losing bits of clothing on the way to the couch. Distantly, he notices as it falls from her hand to the floor that her bra is pink, and then that piece of info vacates his brain because her breasts are truly beautiful and the sensation of skin on skin so exquisite. Her panties are damp against his hand, so he reaches two fingers underneath. She's very wet, and as his fingers explore, she writhes underneath him, gasping. "These – off, " he growls into her neck, and peels her panties off her hips, kissing her again, feeling her move against his hand. He's rushing this, he knows he's rushing it, he _doesn't fucking care._

"Please," she whispers against his mouth, pulling with impatient hands at his shorts. "I need you, please, Tommy." He yanks them down out of the way, and as easy as taking a breath, he's inside her.

It feels so, so good. God, the _heat _of her, and the soft slick resistance, and her body underneath him, her arms so tight around him, and the smell of her perfume and her skin –

"_Yes_," she says into his mouth, and her hands dig into his shoulders while he rakes his fingers into her hair and kisses her. Oh,_ holy fuck,_ he's not going to last long. He tries to hold on with shallow strokes, rocking gently into her, but Kelly's increasingly frantic movements put an end to that vague strategy. Her cheeks are bright pink, and her soft pleasure noises are nearly nonstop, and he can't help wanting to be as deep inside her as possible. So finally he gives in to that caveman urge. Seven of those deep plunges – the best he can do to slow down the wave of chaos threatening to churn down his spinal column is _count_ – and she's throwing her head back and keening, inner muscles spasming around him, two more strokes, and then he can't hold it any longer, he's groaning _Kelly_ into her neck and rolling under that wave.

When he gets his breath back and can focus again, he sees that her eyes are wet. "You okay?"

She puts her hand on his cheek. Smiles that sun-coming-up smile of hers. "So good. Way better than okay."

"Did you _really... _that fast?" She nods. "Wow."

"C'mon, _you _came that fast."

"But I'm a guy – oh shit. Shit, shit, _shit._" He sits up, remembering. At her confused look, he elaborates. "No condom."

"Oh. Well, I still have an IUD in place, so we're covered on the birth control front. Anything else we should worry about?"

_Good_. He shakes his head. Reaches over to hold her hand, takes a long appreciative look down her body. Feels an echo of lust at the evidence of his own orgasm beginning to trickle down her thighs. "Come here." He pulls her onto his lap and kisses her gently. His chest still hurts on the inside from the maelstrom of emotion. "I was actually going to apologize for that being fast. For the record, I usually last longer than – what was that, four minutes?"

"Well, foreplay doesn't usually last for weeks," she says, reasonably, and runs a finger over his scarred eyebrow. "I mean, I knew we were going to wind up here the day you gave me a head massage."

"You knew, huh?" He kisses her again. _God,_ that's really good, the kissing. Gotta do more of that.

"I knew."

"You made me damn well work for it," he says.

"I'm not sorry," she shoots right back. Their eyes meet and hold, a tender heated gaze. "I love you," she says again, and he echoes it in a whisper, and their lips meet, and he could drown in the sweetness of it.

Finally she pulls away long enough to speak. "Come upstairs, will you? Stay? Please?" she says. Yes, he will. Sleep in her bed? Yes, yes_ yes yesyesyes_. They lock the doors and turn out the lights, holding hands. He follows her up the narrow steps, one hand on her hip like it belongs to him (maybe it does, just a little). She stops in the bathroom, digs around in the cabinet and finds a new toothbrush. She hands it to him with the explanation that she buys them when she can find them on sale, so she's pretty much always got a spare.

For some reason, it makes him laugh. There's a sort of goofy sweetness to standing with her in her bathroom, brushing teeth, leaning over the sink in their underwear and taking turns spitting. "Come here," he whispers, and pulls her close. Reaches over and turns out the light. He loves the way her arms wrap around his waist, and the way she puts her head on his shoulder and relaxes into him trustfully. It is easy and tender and comfortable, and the ache in his chest feels right.

"I'm so happy," she says. "I'm scared to death."

"I know." He feels the same. He kisses her head, and the heat starts to flare again between them, with Kelly kissing his neck, and he can't help putting his hands under her ass to hold her closer, and then she wraps her leg around his hip, so he just picks her up and they sort of stagger down the short hall to her room.

It's just as good in her bed. And it takes much longer this time, and the next time, going slow and easy, with the tender exploration of each other's bodies and the luxury of kisses that go on and on and on. It is exactly as _smoking hot_, in his opinion, as the searing, can't-wait, first time – just different. The door is locked and the lights are off, and they have to be quiet so as to not wake up the boys, but the moonlit memories of that night in her bed will never leave him. The roundness of her breasts, the way her head falls back in pleasure, the feel of her legs locked around his back, the timbre of her moans, all of that is burned into his memory. Kissing her, whispering to her, holding her and feeling her tremble, kissing tears from her cheeks. Feeling her shudder and clench around him. Feeling her be like the home he's been missing all these years, all these years. He will always remember how there is no pain that can touch him while he is inside her, while her arms and her eyes hold him so securely, there in the dark.

Sometime well after midnight, curled around Kelly and smelling her hair, he drifts into a sound sleep. He dreams, not of fire and blood and death, but of swimming in a deep lake so blue he can't see the bottom, and so large he can only see one shore.

_**A/N: Second warning: do not get too comfortable here. Here There Be Dragons. **_


	26. Chapter 26: The World Is on Vacation

**Ch 26: The World Is on Vacation**

**As always, I claim only my own characters.**

Friday morning, little fingers of sunlight coming in through the blinds wake Kelly up, and for a second she can't remember why she went to sleep facing the window when she usually sleeps on her other side. And then she realizes she isn't alone in the bed, and she can't prevent this enormous grin rushing across her face. There's an arm around her and a warm bulk up behind her, and she doesn't know what time it is or how long they might have to be private before she has to get ready for work, so she cranes her head to see the alarm clock on the dresser across the room. 5:36 am, it says, and she knows that Tommy's usually awake by now. She tries turning within the clutch of his arm, but he just holds her tighter and mutters something incoherent. She figures she'd better try something else, and she moves her bottom firmly back into the cradle of his hips.

She's rewarded by another, slightly more awake-sounding mutter. This is going to work. She wiggles again, a little harder, and puts her arm over his, reaching for where his hand grips her ribs. Works her fingers around his hand and squeezes a little, and when his head moves on the pillow she wiggles her butt against him again, and his grip on her ribcage gets almost painfully tight before he yawns and relaxes his arm.

She'd like to turn over and be sweet and say every single mushy thing she can to him, but she knows that is probably pushing it. That might scare him. That can wait. Instead, she lets her voice fall into her Virginia drawl because she knows it amuses him, and she says, "Lord-a-_mercy_, if I didn't know better I would swear there was a man in my bed."

He leans forward and kisses her neck. "I don't mean to alarm you, ma'am, but there is."

_Good, he's playing along_. "Well, I cannot imagine who that could be. And it does bring up the question of whether I should scream, or whether I should just turn over and introduce myself."

"Oh, you should definitely turn over," he says, and he is amused, she can hear it in his voice.

So she turns in the circle of his arm and props herself up on his chest. "Well, fancy meeting _you_ here."

"Woman," he says, trying not to grin, "are you tellin' me you have no idea who was in your bed driving you crazy last night?"

"I'm not sure. But whoever he was, he certainly knew what he was doing."

"Must have been me, then," he says, and he gives in to the grin, one so wide and sweet she can't resist leaning up to kiss him. The kissing, that's _so_ good. They should absolutely do more of that.

"Come to think of it, I do recognize you. Aren't you the yard boy?" she teases, and he laughs. "I have to be out of bed at 6:30," she adds, getting serious for a minute, "so I can be at work by eight. I know you're usually up by now."

"Yeah, usually. But hey, guess what – I _am_ up." He moves her hand to where she can feel, and .he really _is_, and she gets the giggles. _Tommy Conlon, naked in my bed, making raunchy __puns_. It's delightful.

"You are a gorgeous hunk of man," she tells him, entertaining thoughts of just straddling him where he is. She's never been much of a morning-sex person, but she's rethinking that now. "Damn, I have good taste."

"Do you?" He raises his eyebrows. "I don't know about that, but I think I should find out." And just as she's starting to get her brain wrapped around that one, he flips her over on her back, pins her thighs with his own, and starts sliding down her body.

Which responds with some serious heat down low in her belly, and she gasps. "You did _not_ just say – "

"Oh, yes, I did," he says, and gives her this incredibly sexy devilish grin, and there's another rush of heat to her girly parts as he slides farther, still pinning her legs down and spread wide apart.

"Ohhh," she says, feeling a trickle of her own moisture in that sensitive place, under his warm breath. And then _he's_ there, lips and tongue and fingers, and she loses track completely of where she is until he lifts his head up and starts talking to her.

"_Jesus_, Kelly," he says, breathless, "look, I love your noises, they drive me _fucking_ insane, but if you don't damp it down a little we'll have Martin in here any minute wanting to know what we're doing, and I just don't think I can come back from that kind of interruption. So – " and he reaches up and grabs her pillow, making her head bounce onto the mattress, "muffle it, willya?" He pushes the pillow into her hands and goes back to what he's doing, which is so amazing that she loses track all over again, the tension twisting tighter and tighter inside until she comes unglued, flying into little pieces and mangling that pillow.

She's starting to get her breath back when he finally moves back up her body to kiss her lips. He yanks the pillow out of the way and says, "God, that was beautiful. I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching that."

There probably couldn't be any more blood rushing to her face, or she'd blush harder. The idea of him watching her come, all up close like that, is incredibly sensual, and then he says, "And you do taste good. See?" She can taste herself on his tongue, and that's pretty hot, too, thinking of where his tongue has just been, and she is just about to beg him to _please_ make love to her, please, when he says, "Baby, please, I can't wait anymore," and pushes inside her, slow and gentle, holding back.

"Harder," she pleads, because the need for him is buzzing right under her skin, and he grabs her hips and holds her tight, moving strong and sure, steady and hard, and it isn't long before she's close again, crying out into his mouth, wrapping one leg around his butt to pull him tighter to her, and then it happens _again_, and the only thing that keeps the pieces from flying apart is the pressure of his body against hers.

He slides his hands underneath her, lifting up her hips, and speeds up the pace, and it's not long until he's groaning a string of unintelligible curses into her hair and his shoulders shake under her hands, and then, finally, there is peace between them.

The night, though it had its own pleasures, did not contain quite enough sleep, and Kelly drifts off again, head on his shoulder. At 6:30, she's sleeping so deeply the alarm startles the heck out of her, and she sits straight up, heart pounding. She's alone in the bed.

She gets up and turns off the alarm – she knows better than to put the alarm right beside the bed, because she has the terrible habit of turning it off and going back to sleep, and only getting out of bed seems to wake her up enough to not do that. _I should change the sheets_, she thinks, and then she doesn't want to; she wants to be able to get into her bed tonight and smell their bodies on the sheets. _Damn him, he just left without kissing me goodbye_. And then, when she pulls back the top sheet to straighten it out, she sees his navy tee-shirt there in the bed. She knows good and well he didn't wear his shirt upstairs last night, because she was admiring his shirtless body. And there on the floor of her room rest her shorts and bra and underwear. But no pink shirt. Huh.

She makes up the bed (leaving his shirt under the pillow) and hops into the shower, feeling rushed. She'd forgotten to get out a set of scrubs for today, and she winds up pulling a mismatched blue-and-green set out of her drawer and deciding to just not care how she looks at work today. She'll be clean, at least. While she's stepping into her clean undies, she thinks again of what it was like, having his head between her thighs, and shudders with remembered pleasure.

This day is going to be absolutely impossible. Impossible.

She wakes the boys up and then dries her hair a little before slapping on just a tad of makeup, only enough to camouflage her dark circles and tame the flush still on her face, and highlight her lashes with dark mascara. There is nothing to be done about the beard burn on her collarbone except hope that no one notices it. It's not like it's a hickey, it's just a long pink mark that could be passed off as some minor injury if necessary.

She grabs the big duffel bags from the hall closet and starts packing clothes for Jack and Martin; this weekend is Father's Day and Mike had asked so humbly that the boys' weekend with him be this one that she'd agreed to change the schedule. She packs four changes of clothes plus underwear and socks and pajamas, and then upon reflection adds another change of clothes, just in case, because she doesn't want Mike to have to deal with laundry if somebody spills juice or gets muddy.

The boys are barely dressed when she hustles them into the bathroom to brush their teeth. She's running very late today, having daydreamed an extra ten minutes in the shower (damn that sexy tattooed man), and she grabs her cell phone as soon as she comes downstairs, intending to call Tess and ask if she minds feeding the boys breakfast today.

But there are two messages on it, and she opens the first one, smiling because she knows who it's from. It says, _Christ, Doherty, u nearly wore me out. Be lucky to get thru the day w/out falling over._

She feels the same way. She's about to text back when she decides she'd better read the other text too. It says, _Oh yeah, left u my shirt because I took yours. It smells like you. If u wear my shirt to bed ill come rip it off you later :D_

And that one makes her shudder with anticipated pleasure.

She texts a reply: _Anything you want, Conlon. Call me at lunch pls? _She knows that's somewhat dangerous, telling Tommy anything he wants, but the idea is exhilarating too.

And then she calls Tess, who says she'll be happy to feed Jack and Martin. She grabs a protein bar; no time for coffee right now, _ack, _she's gonna die from lack of caffeine unless she can go grab some later. In the car, she goes over the visiting-Daddy thing again with Jack, and he's apparently either reconciled himself to trying to have a good time, or has figured out that unless something bad happens he's going anyway, so she feels a little bit better about that. Those bedtime conversations about how people can change may have helped.

When she drops off the boys there's no sign of Tommy, and she suspects his schedule is even more out of whack than hers is this morning. She manages to hit the McDonald's long enough to buy a cup of coffee.

The day sucks. Just _sucks_. It's so busy she doesn't have time to chit-chat and have everybody in the office remark on her flushed cheeks or the slight pinkness across her collarbone, but she also has to stay on top of patient charts and schedules, and she only gets a breath when the office closes at noon (which actually means that the last morning patient leaves at 12:22). She keeps checking her phone as she microwaves a frozen meal in the office kitchen, but nothing. The office opens again at 1:30, but she's got to be back on duty, answering patient phone calls, at 1:00. Her phone does not ring and does not ring, and she's wary of calling him because his phone probably sits in his duffel bag in his locker at the gym, and she doesn't want to miss hearing his voice.

Well, crap. She does have a few minutes to relax while she's eating outside at the picnic table, and as soon as she finishes her pasta primavera with ham, she falls into another daydream, remembering last night.

All that holding back seems to have made her insatiable. She cannot get enough of him, and she has never come so many times in a row _in her life_. And if she's been wondering for weeks what he'd be like in bed, now she has her answer: very direct. Very masculine, take-charge, authoritative, and yet with all of that, so sweet it makes her throat ache. He might, for example, maneuver her legs into some odd position without even asking, but then it feels amazing, and the way he'll run his thumb across her cheek or whisper her name over and over across her skin so that it's like feathery kisses, it just... she can't even... oh God. Like the way he'd pulled her astride him, guiding her hips, and then said, _Wait. Wait, let me sit up, I wanna hold you close_, and at that angle, with his arms wrapped around her, he'd been so deep, and when she moved it hit all the good spots, so that she'd climaxed twice, one right after the other.

And if she doesn't stop thinking about it, she won't even get through the rest of the day. Her panties are probably damp right now, and her pulse is probably through the roof.

Her cell phone rings, and when she goes to pick it up her hands are trembling. "Hello?" Her voice is breathless to an alarming degree; it's like she can't get enough oxygen.

His is not breathless, it's got that deep almost-scratchy quality it gets sometimes. "Miss me?"

"Conlon, you have _no idea_. I'll be lucky if I don't get fired today, I'm so distracted."

"Oh, you think _you_ are? I keep seeing you on the back of my eyelids, it's makin' me crazy. Frank's already threatened to kick my ass twice for not paying attention," he says, and her pulse kicks up even higher.

"Oh. Well, I guess you win. My boss has never threatened to kick my ass."

"You sound funny, are you okay?"

"I can't breathe. It's all your fault." But she ruins it by laughing, and he laughs a little too. "You kidnapped my shirt, too."

"Oh, I'm keepin' that shirt. Forget the ransom."

"You can't even wear it! I mean, I can see me wearing your shirt, but not the other way around."

"Don't have to wear it to smell it." And then she can hear the smile in his voice get bigger. "So that means you _are_ gonna wear my shirt?"

"Definitely."

"Can I see you in it?"

"In it. Out of it. Whatever," she says, and her heart is really hammering away now, and she's going to be late getting back from lunch and she does _not _care.

"When?" he says, and now he's breathless too. "Tonight?"

"After the boys go to Mike's, if that's okay." And then something occurs to her that hasn't before. "Um. Listen. I'm not quite ready to tell people about this yet. I'm just so... I don't know, it just happened so fast. I'm kind of dreading the moment that we slow down enough today for my coworkers to actually look at me and see how crazy I am right now." He's quiet. "And I just feel like this is a... a beautiful secret. I mean, the beautiful part is not that it is a secret. The beautiful part is how I feel, and I just don't want to share it yet. Does that make sense?"

"Not really," he says, sounding confused.

"Oh. Well, I guess I just don't want to slam Tess with all of this when I go get the boys this afternoon, so don't be shocked if I don't come stick my tongue down your throat or anything. Okay?"

"No, I getcha. Okay."

She checks the time on her phone: 1:01 pm. "Oh crap. I have to be back at work in like thirty seconds. Seriously. Can I call you later, or do you just want to come over? Whenever? You can come have dinner with us if you want."

"I'll come over around nine," and that raspy thing is back in his voice, that almost-growl.

"Can't wait," she says, breathless again, and ends the call.

The afternoon is not as busy as the morning, but somehow it's worse, because she keeps hearing his voice in her head, remembering little pieces of last night, and every time she turns around somebody is saying to her something like, "You must have gotten some sun yesterday," or "It's hot in here, isn't it? Your cheeks are red." She finishes up at lightning speed at closing time, thank goodness there aren't any late patients today, and decides to skip the gym today.

When she gets to Tess' to pick up Jack and Martin, Tess meets her at the front door. "You have to come see this," she says, softly, beckoning Kelly with her finger. She follows Tess through the house to the back deck, where three people are asleep on the bench that sits up against the house: Tommy, with Rosie's head on his chest and his arm around Martin. My Father's Dragon, one of Martin's favorite books, has apparently fallen from Tommy's hand to the deck floor. It is one of the most truly adorable sights Kelly has ever seen, and she has to blink tears out of her eyes.

"We went to the pool," Tess whispers, "and of course that always wears the kids out. And Martin was begging for that book, so Tommy said he'd read it and they went outside, and the next thing I know there isn't a sound from any of them. This was – " she checks the kitchen clock over her shoulder, "oh, maybe forty minutes ago, and they're all dead to the world. I don't think Tommy's getting enough rest lately."

Well, he sure didn't last night. Kelly's cheeks flame red again, and she can only pray Tess does not notice.

"Let me get their stuff together before you go wake Martin up," Tess says. She closes the back door and goes down to the basement family room, and Kelly can hear her talking downstairs.

"What are they doing?" she asks, having recognized Jack's voice, when Tess comes back up.

"Playing Connect Four. Emily's kicking his butt, but then she's a whiz at Connect Four. I told them to pack up the game, and I told Jack to come get his shoes." Tess hands Kelly two small backpacks. "Wet swimsuits in there, in plastic bags."

"Thanks, sweetie," Kelly says.

"Oh, and I'm just reminding you, we're going to Pittsburgh to stay with my parents for Father's Day weekend, so we're leaving in the morning and we won't be around until late Sunday. But I suppose Tommy will be here if you need anything."

"Oh." She'd forgotten. "He's not going to stay with his and Brendan's dad?"

"No, I think Frank's got him doing something this weekend."

_Wonder what that could be. Well, he'll probably tell me._ She turns down Tess' invitation to dinner. She wants to go home and feed her boys and see them off to their dad's, and then go up to her bed and get Tommy's tee-shirt ripped off her, and just thinking about it makes her shudder again.

Tess asks if she's okay, and Kelly puts her off with the explanation "just a chill," and then she goes out to the deck to wake Martin up. She leans over to kiss her son's head. He's so sweet, Martin, when he's not irritating the life out of her.

"Mommy," Martin says, opening his eyes.

"Time to go, sweetheart. We need to get you all ready for the weekend. You go to Daddy's tonight, remember?" She talks softly. Leans down to put his sandals back on him and Velcro the closures.

"Oh yeah! We might go to to the park." Martin hops off the bench before she's done, before she can move Tommy's arm away gently, and Tommy startles awake. He looks disoriented.

"Hey," she says softly to him, looking up. "It's just us."

He blinks twice, then settles back against the house and holds Rosie (who hasn't budged) more securely. "Right." Kelly picks up the book and puts it in Martin's bag.

"I'm going to Daddy's," Martin announces, in a mock whisper.

"All weekend?" Tommy says, holding Kelly's gaze, and Martin nods vigorously. "Sounds fun." Kelly can't prevent the blush she knows has reddened her cheeks, or the grin that won't leave her face. It does sound like fun. Sounds like a _lot _of fun: no children in the house, and she doesn't have to work. Tommy's not grinning, but he's got little sparks in his eyes.

"You three were adorable, sleeping there," she says to him. Teases him a little for being so unbearably cute. "Tess got a picture. We're going to post it on the gym's website."

He sits up straight, steadying Rosie with one hand. "You better not."

"It makes you look _really _tough. All that drool. And My Father's Dragon, too."

"You did not." But he's not really sure, she can tell, and she smiles and shakes her head.

"Hey, go get your brother," she tells Martin. "And get in the car. We need to go do some things at home." To Tommy she says, "I'll see _you _later."

She tells Tess and Emily goodbye and hurries out to her car. She feeds the boys a quick dinner – leftover grilled chicken, steamed green beans, baked potatoes – and makes them brush their teeth, and then Mike's pulling up in his old Forester at 6:35. She gives them the wrapped Father's Day gifts (framed school photos, a restaurant gift card, some craft things the boys made), kisses them goodbye. Leans in to Mike's window and says, "Happy Father's Day." He looks surprised, and then solemnly pleased, when she adds, "We did something good here," and gestures to their sons.

"Yeah, we did," he says. "Thanks, Kelly. Listen – I wasn't going to ask, but... can I keep the boys until Monday morning? There's a Father's Day softball game, our engine company against Engine 14, and I kind of wanted them to be with me for that. I don't have to be on duty until two on Monday, and I could just drop them at their babysitter's. Is that okay?" He really wants this, she can see. There's a softness in Mike's eyes that makes her think of the way he was early on in their marriage, before things went bad, and she says yes. "Tell me the address where they need to go again?"

"Tess Conlon's. 442 Maple Heights. Remember them? Brendan and Tess and their little girl Emily?"

"Oh, right. Yeah, I know where that is. Okay, I'll have them there by, like, nine Monday."

So she wishes her sons and their father a good weekend and goes back inside, and only then does she realize that's _three_ free nights, three nights in which she can make as much noise in bed as she feels like making, and the thrill of anticipation goes all the way down to her ankles.

She does some of her normal Saturday morning cleaning, takes a shower, puts on her nicest panties (because, despite her suspicion that she's not going to be wearing them for very long, why not?), and then an old sundress that leaves her neck and shoulders almost bare. It's white eyelet, and so worn that the lace is starting to look ragged, but he's not going to notice that, and she still feels pretty in it.

Tommy is early. And carrying a grocery-store bouquet of pink roses, which he didn't have to do, but that's why it's so like him.

"I wanted to bring you something," he says immediately, handing over the bouquet. "I know, it's sort of dumb, but I couldn't get the whole florist shop on the bike."

"No, it's perfect." She reaches up to kiss him, and that's so perfect too that they both forget about the flowers, heart-deep into the sweetness of their lips touching. Kissing leads to tasting, and embraces give way to caresses, and then hands aren't enough, it has to be entire bodies, and there can be no clothing in the way. He carries her up the stairs in the dark, and then they are together in the bed, and there could be nothing better than the way they fall into each other, discovering the exact friction of stars.

It's only after the loving, when he has fallen asleep looking about six years old (from the chin up, if you don't notice the stubble) that she remembers the roses and has to go downstairs to put them in water.

She locks the door, turns off all the lights and brings scattered clothes upstairs. Finds his navy tee-shirt abandoned on her bedroom floor, where it fell off the bed earlier. Smiles. Puts it on and curls herself around him. The lack of sleep from the previous night, and the absolute deliciousness of three orgasms in a row, and the way she feels so safe with him close by, all combine to send her into a sleep so deep and satisfying that again it is dawn before she wakes.

**A/N: BTW, My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett is a wonderful kids' book. There are sequels, but I advise you not to bother with them. Stick with the charming original.**

**And here is where I toss a shout-out to WinterIsComing01 and Nik216, for insisting that I continue the fluff for at least a little while longer, before allowing those lurking dragons to attack. You gals were right. Hey-o! **

**(Of course, that means I've had to replot. But it may actually be BETTER this way, because it solves a conundrum that had been ruining my sleep...)**


	27. Chapter 27: Interlude

**Ch 27: Interlude**

**A/N: If you do an Internet search for "lemon fluff recipe," Google comes back with the following: "****About 1,240,000 results (0.27 seconds)." This chapter, although it doesn't actually produce a dessert you can eat, is one of them. :) **

**And, um, the conversation gets a little blunt and graphic at times, but then both these characters are that: blunt and graphic.**

Tommy blinks awake in an instant, not sure where he is until he feels her cotton-clad breast under his hand, and then he knows. He doesn't live here, but at this moment it feels like home.

She's still asleep, puffing out those baby-doll lips of hers with every exhalation, and she's got hair all over in her face, and he wants to let her sleep but that's not going to last long, not the way his body feels with Kelly's sweet round ass tucked up against him. He tells himself to be patient, they've got the whole day. Yes, and tomorrow too.

Well, most of the day. Frank wants him in the gym later this morning for a short sparring practice, and he's supposed to run on his own – just once, not twice, and no other work today because Frank's been muttering stuff under his breath about overtraining. He's not supposed to do weights or heavy bag or footwork or core strengthening or anything. And any other day,_ any_ other day, he'd be screaming bloody murder about it. But today... today he is in a big bed with an armful of the sweetest woman in the world, and not an interruption on the horizon.

So, with literally thousands of minutes to spare until Monday morning, he proceeds to blow some of them on things that don't matter. Like reaching up and brushing those brown curls out of her face. Like lifting her hand so he can check the healing of tattoo on her wrist (sunburn pink under the design, normal at this point). Like looking at her wearing his shirt as he'd asked her to,_ damn_. Like kissing her neck and stroking her side down to the dip at her waist and then up the slope of her hip, and he really should let her sleep but he's not going to be able to, his shirt's ridden up to her waist and she's bare below it, and he's already so hard it hurts.

He kisses her neck again, and her ear, the back of her neck, little butterfly-wing kisses he hopes will wake her up gently. Caresses her thigh, then picks it up and moves it a little forward so he can reach between her legs to her core. She moves a little, and makes a soft _hmm_ noise as he strokes her there, and he traces his tongue over her earlobe. _Mmmm_, she says again, and moves her head on the pillow. He slides one finger inside her, and she's wet, maybe from last night but it doesn't matter, she's so hot and he really can't wait long.

_Ohhhh_, she sighs, stretching a little and starting to wake up, turning her head toward him and whispering his name. He leans to kiss her mouth, but at the same time he can't help taking himself in hand and rubbing the swollen head along the soft folds of her sex, past the slick opening and up to the hardening nub at the front, back and forth, back and forth. She's awake now, making her little noises, and he slides inside her, just a little way in and back out, _Jesus,_ it's making him crazy to be completely in but he'll finish too fast if he does, she feels so _hot_ and it's almost heaven. He keeps it up as long as he can, but he can feel himself heading for the cliff. So he reaches over and grabs her hand, puts it on that sensitive spot, whispers, "Touch yourself, baby, please," and she moans louder, but she does it. And even though that's meant to be for her, it kicks his need up higher and he has to squeeze himself firmly to keep from coming right then.

She says his name again and turns her head back over her shoulder for kisses, and it _must_ be good because her hips have started to rock back into him. "More," she says against the side of his mouth, and that's it, no more holding back, he's as deep inside her as he can get, _oh fuck that's good yes_. She echoes his thought, "Yeeessss," all slurred and needy-sounding, and he can tell she's close by the way she's tightened up around him _oh shit yes just hang on a minute, let her finish..._ She's making these deep groans and that pushes him over the cliff where he's trying to hang on with his fingernails but he _can't_, it's just gone and he can't stop it now, all he can do is keep moving and hope it's enough. But it seems that it is, because about the time he stops pulsing she shudders hard and convulses around him. And even though he's done, it still feels so good.

She finally sighs, and he puts her thigh back down on the bed. Kisses her cheek and ear and neck again, stays deep inside her because it feels right to stay. Gathers her tight up against him again with his arm. "You good?" he whispers.

"Can't you tell?" she whispers back. "I don't know why we're whispering, there's nobody else in the house."

"It's early," he says, not whispering but not loud either. "And yeah. I could feel it. Besides, you make a lot of noise." She squeezes him with those inner walls, and he sucks in a breath, not expecting it.

She laughs softly. "You weren't exactly quiet either," she says.

"I wasn't?" Huh.

"You were quiet yesterday when the boys were here. Not just now though – you swore. A lot. And you said my name about four times, all mixed up with the cussing."

"Are you _laughin'_ at me?"

"No. It was... it kind of kicked me over the edge, actually. Hearing you out of control, and feeling it."

Huh. "So. You, um, you liked that?"

"Yeah." She lifts his hand and kisses the fingers, and a rush of tenderness sweeps over him. He kisses her hair.

"So you can feel it when I finish? Or did you just know because I lost my shit there at the end?"

There's a little pause, and then her voice has dropped in pitch, low and sensual. "I can feel it. Not the... force of it, exactly, but it's... hot. It feels really warm." _Whoa_. "Which is sort of inexplicable. I mean, you'd think that internal body temperatures would be sort of the same and I wouldn't be able to tell, but I can."

"Nurse Kelly, I think I have a fever."

And she laughs. "Oh, _God_, not the nurse fantasy. Don't even ask me."

"_You _started it, talking about internal body temperatures."

"Fair enough. I apologize." She's quiet a minute and then she says, "That was kind of a weird question for somebody who clearly knows his way around a female body."

"Oh. Well, the last time I did this without a condom, I was maybe nineteen, and I didn't think to ask at the time. Probably didn't _care_ at the time."

Kelly says, "Can I turn over? I'm getting a crick in my neck trying to talk to you." So he slips out of her and moves his arm enough for her to turn to her other side. "That's better."

In the morning sunlight he can count the freckles on her nose: thirteen. He leans over to kiss her there, and she smiles. "I have to go run. And then I have to be at the gym at ten, but only for a couple of hours," he tells her.

"I need to go through Martin's dresser and sort out the clothes he's grown out of. And maybe go to my gym because I didn't yesterday. Other than that – " she trails her finger across his jaw, "I'm all yours today. We can do anything we want."

"How about we do this again later? Seemed like you were enjoying it."

"We should definitely do this again," she says, and shivers a little. "It's too good not to." She pulls his chin to her face and kisses along his lower lip, then across the top one, and does it again, sliding the tip of her tongue over his lips and then kissing them with open mouth, and if he hadn't just come ten minutes ago he'd be rock-hard again, because it's pretty damn hot. He's not nineteen anymore; these days he needs at least a good half-hour of downtime in between.

"Can I ask something?" she says, and she sounds hesitant.

"Anything."

"Have there been a lot of girls?"

Well, shit. But of course she'd want to know, and since over the last 32 hours he's been inside her... count it up, _six times_... fair enough. He sighs. "Yeah." While he's trying to remember exactly how many there have been, he can see her gathering herself to ask. "Kelly, look. It's not like I'm not going to tell you. I will. It's gonna make me look like a complete dick. But let me explain somethin' to you, okay? They didn't matter. None of 'em. And that's pretty shitty of me. I know. But it was just..." He sighs again. Saying it out loud, it just makes him feel like an asshole, and maybe it was asshole behavior. Actually, he knows it was. "The first girl I had sex with, I thought I was in love with her. But _she _thought it was just a nice way to spend a summer. And after that, I didn't want to let anybody get close. I didn't want to get hurt. I didn't want to hurt anybody. They didn't mean anything. So that's why twenty-two is really not the big number it sounds like."

She's been listening with her waiting face, the one she wears when Martin is complaining about Jack, or vice versa, and she hasn't figured out which one of them started it or even if that matters. Judgment reserved. But he lets "twenty-two" fly, and she blinks and bites her lip, like it hurts, and that hurts him.

"_You are not those girls_," he says to her, urgently, reaching for her hand. "They are not anything like you." How can he explain this, how blindsided he got by his feelings? "You got close to me when I wasn't even paying attention. Before I noticed how beautiful you are. And now it feels..." He has to stop for a minute, because that stretching ache is back in his chest. "It feels like there's some part of me that I found. I didn't know it was missing, but here it is. And it's you." Tears are spilling over her lashes and onto the pillow. "Baby, don't cry. Don't. I love you so much."

She actually smiles through the tears, and says, "Look, you're going to have to get used to this, but sometimes I cry when I'm really happy."

"That's freaky, Doherty," he tells her, trying to get back onto a plane where it doesn't feel like having your heart naked in the broiling sun.

"The other thing is," she says, "I mean, other than being happy. The other thing is that I am so scared because right off the top of my head I can think of about seven different ways either one of us could screw this up so bad. And I don't want that to happen. It still hurts me that I couldn't make my marriage work."

"I guess we just try not to hurt each other," he says. "That seems really easy right now."

She nods. "Yeah. I think we have to start there. So, okay, I promise I will do everything in my power not to hurt you."

"I promise not to hurt you," he echoes. "Kiss me." That kiss is so sweet he can still taste it when he pulls back and realizes how late it is. "Crap, I have to go. I'm late."

**A/N: More fluffy weekend to come. I just thought it might be better to get this bit posted now.**


	28. Chapter 28: Promises

**Ch 28: Promises**

**A/N: Sorry for posting delay, I had a very busy family week. And also, this is a long chapter that took a longish time to write. I'm not sorry. ;)**

**Here, Teh Lemon Fluff continues. But read carefully. For one thing, it's probably NSFW. For another, there are hints of dragons here. In fact, there have been hints in the two previous fluff chapters as well. If you are cringing now, you might want to turn down the volume of the LurkingEvilometer on your reading device, or close your eyes and sing LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.**

It's late, nearly 7 am, by the time he manages to get out and run, and it's going to be warm today. Only low 90s, but it's humid so breathing is harder. As if he needs anything besides his recent memories to make breathing more difficult – every few minutes his brain replays some particularly erotic scene for him, his own personal peep show, and once he even has to stop at a cross-street and just breathe for a minute, because he's light-headed.

He swings back by Brendan and Tess' to pack up some clothes, so he won't have to wear the same sweaty things all weekend, and it's a good thing he was able to snag Brendan's backpack because he doesn't fancy running back to Kelly's carrying a duffel. That messes with your balance.

After a shower and an enormous breakfast – scrambled eggs with turkey sausage, red bell pepper, broccoli and cheese, plus oranges and whole wheat toast and coffee – he's got a little while to rest before going to the gym. He's not sure why he's so tired lately, unless it's all the disrupted sleep, but he dozes off on the couch anyway, making sure to tell Kelly that he has to be awake by 9:30.

She offers to drop him off at the gym on her way to the hospital wellness center, and to pick him up later, and because her car affords them a little more time together, he says that would be fine, and he'll call her when he's done. It's 9:53 when she pulls into the gym parking lot, and he figures he's got time to kiss her some before she leaves, but at 10:02 Frank texts him: _YOU ARE LATE. GET HERE OR FACE THE WRATH._

_Shit_. He grabs one more kiss and gets out of the car, getting a little thrill out of how glazy-eyed Kelly looks from the kissing.

Frank is all ready to go when he walks in the door, and highly annoyed that he has to wait for Tommy to shuck his shirt and shoes and to sit down for Jose to wrap his hands. Wrapping takes time, and Frank had apparently expected him to be _ready at ten_. Frank sets him to a little ten-minute warmup with a jump rope and another ten minutes with the heavy bag before they get into the ring, and that's dealt with easy enough.

He'll be dancing with Frank himself today, not Jose or Marco or Brendan, and although Frank's been retired for some time he's still full of head games and tricky stuff. It's half past by the time they get started, both of them in protective headgear and shin guards and sparring pads. They go at it for a good forty, forty-five minutes nonstop, and Tommy's actually winded by the time that he can see Frank's done, cooked to the bone. Frank's in great shape and he's wily, but he's older. It matters.

Shit, what's Tommy going to do when age slows his moves enough for it to matter? He'll need to have a plan. Right now, all he can see is straight through to Labor Day weekend, which is fine because he does best with a focus, but for later... he doesn't know.

No muscle weakness today, no aches. He's still tired, but that could very well be from all the extracurricular activities. Frank lets him work the speed bag for awhile, then runs him through one of those freaky relaxation yoga things, and tells him that the morning session is finished but he can run his usual six miles in the evening. Just as he's getting ready to go hit the shower, Frank stops him. "You look different today. I mean..." Frank shakes his head, trying to express himself, "do you have something personal going on? Hot date tonight or something?" and by the time the words "hot date" come out of Frank's mouth, Tommy's trying to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head, trying to control the involuntary shiver, and Frank sees. "Ah. Fine. Never mind, then. Just don't get too distracted."

"No." _Fuck that, I am totally distracted. But if it didn't show in the sparring, I guess it's okay. _He ducks into the locker room, grabs his cell phone out of his locker and texts Kelly: _Done. Showering here, will be ready to go in 15 min._

Out of the shower and dressed in cargo shorts and a gray tee, he waves at Frank and Jose sitting in the office and discussing something intently, and then he's outside, pacing until he sees the blue Corolla pulling into the parking lot.

"Hey," he says, leaning on the car when she pulls up and rolls down the window, "how about givin' a guy a ride?"

She pulls her sunglasses down and gives him a flirty slow blink over them, mock-innocent. "What, here in the car?"

"Ha ha." He's actually too tired at the moment, but she's giving him ideas. He gets in, slings his bag in the back, and leans in for a kiss. "Baby, I wouldn't rule it out, but I don't wanna get arrested either." She's wearing her pink tee-tan shorts combo again, so pretty, and she smiles at him as she pulls out onto the street. He just wants to cuddle her for awhile and then see where that goes.

Maybe after lunch. He's starving.

"You want lunch?" she asks, accelerating onto the highway.

"_God, yes_." She laughs, and he tells her, "I need some protein, woman. Gotta keep my strength up if there's going to be any riding going on later." Back at her house, he drinks chocolate milk and she makes Italian pork stir-fry with veggies and pasta while he sets her table for two. She asks him to turn on her iPod in the speaker and set it to "random," so he does that. Watches her bend over things in the kitchen, and thinks naked thoughts that keep getting interrupted by thoughts of food. But lunch is delicious, and plentiful, and by the time he's finally finished eating, she's put the few leftovers (there weren't many) away and stuck her plate in the dishwasher.

Just as he's starting to suggest they go upstairs, she yawns. So that makes him yawn too and tell her he needs a nap, and they go lie down on the bed, stripped to underwear because it's warm in the room.

"Can we crank that thing?" he asks, pointing to the A/C window unit.

"Um-hm. I just usually leave it on low because I'm not home much in the middle of the day." She steps over to it and changes the setting from 76F to 70, and puts the fan on high and then stretches before she comes back to get on the bed. "I don't know why we're even bothering with underwear," she says sleepily. "Lord knows you're gonna have it off me before I even notice you're unhooking my bra."

"Hell with the bra, I want your panties off. I didn't get dessert." He gives her that naughty grin again because he knows she likes it, and she gasps and bites her bottom lip, and just like _that_ he's hard for her, tired or not. And it's true, the back of his mind has been full of what it was like to drive her crazy yesterday morning, because before the pillow she was loud. She's a moaner for sure, her voice going low instead of high when she comes, but she was making some serious noise the other day when he had his mouth all over her pink.

And that turns him on too: her noises, and the peach-sweet taste of her, and the way she's always so juicy there. The hell with asking permission, he just reaches over and pulls her blue cotton panties off her hips and goes down, kissing from her belly button down to her mound, pushing her thighs apart and then just looking at her inner lips, already pouting open and a bead of moisture dripping. _So beautiful_. He blows a little stream of air across the dampness, and she shivers. He kisses her all down the seam of that tender flesh, open-mouthed and trailing his tongue slowly so he can taste her, and then sets in to lick his way back up to the top where her center of pleasure is visibly swollen now. He takes another look – _God, that's beautiful_ – and begins to caress with fingers and tongue, hearing her soft sighs change to little moans.

_Goal:_ make the little moans into big moans, make her nipples tight, make her hands fist the covers and her head roll back on the pillow, and then back off an inch or two and watch her orgasm from start to finish this time instead of only the last few convulsions.

That's the plan. He follows it, paying attention to the tension in her thighs and the volume of her noises as they escalate, not stopping when her hips start moving in little jerks, so ready for the wave to hit her. He's been about to explode himself for the past few minutes, from tasting her and hearing her moan, knowing that when he does slide inside her she's going to feel like paradise. And then the wave does hit her, making her writhe and keen, making every bit of that sweet pink flesh clench and release, _that's so unbelievably fucking beautiful,_ and when it slows, when her grip in his hair slackens, he moves up to cover her body, kiss her face and push gently into the clutching, hot velvety core of her.

Once again, he's not going to last long, and it's a good thing he's made her finish already because he can't hold out against how incredible it feels. She's still riding out the aftermath of her high, squeezing him tight inside, wrapping her legs around his ass and pulling him closer, looking into his eyes, and there it is, the lightning bolt of pleasure in the brain that zaps down the length of his spine and into his groin, and he gives her everything he's got, everything.

After, he rolls to his side and pulls her close. Kisses her lips and her cheek and her hair, and is asleep in no time at all.

O : O : O :

Kelly dozes for maybe twenty minutes, loving the feel of his arm around her, his thigh heavy over hers, but she can't sleep long. She's got things to do that she's left undone, and she needs to make some plans for the coming week. She slides out from under him, and he really must be exhausted because he doesn't wake.

She cleans up a little and puts the rest of her clothes on – he never bothered to take her bra off her (_damn_, that was amazing) and she was too busy coming her brains out to notice. Then she pulls the sheet back up over Tommy because it's cool in here now, since she overrode the programming on the AC. The bed is a total mess, sheets all wrinkled and spotted here and there, pillows falling off the side. She's neglected the laundry, she hasn't cleaned the kitchen, she hasn't cleaned the bathrooms. She hasn't planned meals for the week or gone grocery shopping. And she can't remember the last time she was this happy.

She's about to leave the room, but stops and goes back to the bed. Leans over and kisses his temple, that sweet place where a man's face is softest, and then his cheek. It's easier to go work now, so she'll have some free time later when he wakes up.

She sorts laundry in the basement, starts a load of white clothes, and declutters the refrigerator of any old leftovers. She's starting to clean the stove when she hears footsteps on the stairs, and he's suddenly there in the kitchen, barefoot and tousled and completely gorgeous in only shorts, and he comes over to her to wrap her in his arms from behind. "Hey, whatcha doin'?"

"Normal weekend cleaning. I vacuumed yesterday."

"Can I help?"

"I can do it," she says. "I always do, it's okay."

"Naw, let me. Got a bathroom to clean? I'm fast at bathrooms." So she points him in the direction of the upstairs bathroom, which has a caddy full of cleaning supplies sitting on the counter, and he goes to work. She turns the music back on and goes to scrub the kitchen sink.

Half an hour later, the kitchen is clean, she's just put the load of whites in the dryer and started a washer load of towels, and she's sitting at the table planning meals for the week. She's gotten to Friday and is just debating with herself the question of who exactly will be in the house to eat food next weekend, when he comes out of the downstairs powder room with dirty cleaning cloths. "Done," he says. "You want these downstairs in the laundry room?"

"Yes, please." When he comes back up, she says, "That was fast."

"Oh, every grunt can clean a latrine. We're known for it," he says, and she has to smile. Daddy had said that too, and his exacting standards had caught both Susan and herself in the past.

"Well, thanks for doing it. I should go change the sheets too," she says, and is surprised to see him frown a little. "What?"

"Your sheets smell like you," he says. "I like 'em."

"Oh. Well. Maybe I should go roll around on the clean ones for awhile so they'll smell like me too." She's kidding, mostly, but he gives her the eye and grins, and her pulse kicks up again.

"Do it naked," he says. "And then let's go somewhere, okay? Somewhere fun."

"Fun like where? Please do not tell me you mean Center City, it will be jammed with tourists on a pretty Saturday in June." She starts up the stairs to change the sheets.

"No. I was thinkin' maybe we could... take our bikes and go to that little park, you know that neighborhood one? Take a blanket and a picnic?" He's standing at the bottom of the stairs talking up to her, and she leans over the rail.

"A picnic? You're hungry again?"

"I will be," he says, reasonably.

"Before dinner?"

"Yep."

She has to laugh. "Okay, Conlon. I will feed you again." There's something that really makes her happy about feeding this guy, and she can't quite identify it but it makes her think of home – of Norton, of Daddy walking in the door filthy from the mine and asking Mama to bring him some sweet ice tea, _oh_, of course that's it.

"Well, you'd better feed me, or I can't answer for the consequences, Miss Walking Dessert."

Daddy used to look at Mama and say, "I make the livin' and she makes the livin' worthwhile." Kelly thinks it might have been some lyrics to a country song but she can't remember, she only remembers the way he'd smile at Mama when he'd say it, and the way Mama's eyes would glow.

What she says over the bannister to Tommy is, "I _said_ I'd feed you."

But he starts up the stairs, looking menacing in the way the light falls down on him from the little window high up, shadowing his eyes under his browbone, and she suddenly feels weak in the knees and panicky, _no, don't,_ and it's only when he gets close to where she stands at the top that he lifts his gaze and she can see he isn't angry in the least. It's something else making his eyes glitter as he leans on the bannister and looks up at her and confides, "One way or another, you will. You taste like peach ice cream." She gets a good breath in, and his face changes. "What? What's wrong?"

She shakes her head. "I'm okay. It just... I'm okay. For a minute there you looked ticked off."

He blinks. Then he nods. "I'm not him. Okay? I promise not to scare you or hurt you or anything. Okay?" He comes up another couple of steps and puts his hand on her arm, gentle. "Here. You find the sheets you want and I'll do it, I'll change them." She pulls him into the upstairs hall with her, pushes him up against the wall, and leans on him. Feels his arms go around her and hold tight. "I promise," he says again, intense.

It takes a few minutes before she can answer. "I know." She kisses the hollow of his neck. "I know you won't hurt me." And it takes a few more minutes before she can extricate herself from his arms and go to the linen closet for clean sheets. They wind up doing it together, taking off the sheets and smoothing the mattress pad, then putting the fresh sheets on. He goes to put the bedspread back on, but she stops him. Starts to take off her shirt again, and he laughs.

"Save it for later, Doherty, okay? I keep tellin' you, I'm not nineteen anymore. I need some recovery time."

So does she, actually; she's starting to feel just a little bit sore. "You were the one talking about dessert, Conlon."

"Dessert after dinner," he says. "Okay? Deal?"

"Deal."

She makes roast beef sandwiches on ciabatta rolls with roasted red pepper and a drizzle of Italian dressing, and adds hardboiled eggs and watermelon to the cooler bag, as well as water bottles and napkins, bug spray and Jack's frisbee. "Let's go," she says, handing him the bag to sling over his shoulders before lifting her bike off the porch. "You have to carry this, and you have to go slower than you would on your own, okay?"

"No prob. Gotta let you and your short little legs keep up."

"Hey, you were the one said that they're not short if they reach the floor." She folds up one of her old tablecloths and sticks it in the basket on the front of her bike.

"I know I said it. But at the time, I was _thinking _something else," he tells her, and flashes that wicked grin at her again. "I was thinking they were plenty long enough to wrap around my back." And then he takes off down the street, not waiting for her until he's gone half a block, and he's laughing when she catches up.

Wilson Park isn't that far on bikes, maybe eight blocks down and two over, in a residential area where the neighborhood association bought a rundown property a couple of years ago, tore down its sagging house, and turned it into a green space with a playground. There are lots of kids running around now, at 4 pm on a Saturday, and as Kelly's spreading out their tablecloth to sit on, she has a sudden surge of longing for her sons. She wants them here; she wants to be a family together, and she suddenly realizes what she'd be doing to Tommy, asking him to take on that kind of parental responsibility. Assuming, of course, that he's as serious about this as she is. It makes her somber.

He hasn't noticed. He's propping their bikes up out of the way and taking off the cooler bag and looking at the kids running around, and when she gets the cloth smooth he sits down on it. "If Jack and Martin were here we'd be watching them goof off over there and have a great time." Then he grins at her. "And we'd be locking the door later. And you'd be shoving that pillow in your mouth again."

"Oh good Lord," she says, secretly joyful. "Get your mind out of the bedroom for once, Conlon."

"Nope," he says. "Can't. Could think about you naked outside, though."

"I can't believe you were seriously having naked thoughts about me as far back as that comment about my short legs."

He laughs. She's never seen him so relaxed, and it's lovely. "Oh, it was worse than that. Brendan clocked me staring at your ass once, and he about knocked my head sideways on my shoulders for doin' it."

"Really? When was this?"

"God, I dunno. Couple months ago." And then he stops smiling.

"What?" But he doesn't answer, just shakes his head. "Is it a big deal or not a big deal?" she asks.

He shrugs. "I don't... it doesn't matter."

_Oh, not this again. _"Don't lie to me, Conlon."

He looks at her seriously, that level look that she knows means he's telling her straight. "I don't wanna talk about it right now."

She can't protest her own rules. "Okay."

"Can we eat now? I'm starving." So they pull out the food and once again she's fascinated by how much (and how fast) he can eat. Funny how hungry she is, too, over the last couple of days – there are hungers and then there are_ hungers_, and maybe her hunger for him is feeding the one for food.

She's so full of watermelon that she lies back down on the cloth. "Ugh, I ate too much." And he laughs and tells her some long involved story about how he and Brendan had gotten into a seed-spitting contest at Joey Beck's house once when they were kids, and it had been unclear who the winner was, so they'd decided to keep a running tally, and there had been no end point on it, so he still doesn't know who won.

Kelly, remembering her father playing horseshoes with Uncle Edward at family picnics back when she was just a little thing, smiles and shakes her head. _Men._ Everything's got to be a competition. Uncle Edward had died of a burst brain aneurysm just the year before Daddy was killed, and Uncle Castle of black lung ten years ago. All the Doherty men except Noah are gone now.

"Don't none of this watermelon in the stores taste the way it did when I was a youngun," she observes. "And I don't know if they changed the cultivars – you know, what varieties they're planting? – or whether it's the soil up here in the North."

"You were thinking about home," Tommy says. "You start talkin' in that accent when you think about your family."

"I guess I do," she says. And she tells him about Daddy's ongoing horseshoes battle with his brother, and how they never did finish it either. "You could start your seed-spitting contest with Brendan again."

"Naw, I don't care anymore." He's quiet a minute, and then he stretches out on his elbow next to her. "I care that he beat me," he confesses. "In the cage. I hate that." He looks into her eyes, and she reaches her hand out and touches him on that spot where you can see the edge of his friend Manny's service number under his shirt. "I'm glad it worked out that he got the money. I'm glad I got my brother back. It just... it _kills_ me that I lost." She nods. She's never cared that much about winning or losing; she likes sports, but sometimes it seems that the contest might be bigger than who scored more points. Like, say, the "Miracle" USA hockey team in 1980. Or the Boston Red Sox finally winning their first World Series in 87 years.

"You hate to lose," she says. "I can tell that much." He's lost some important battles in his life. And the ones he's won, he's won by making himself vulnerable, and of course since he's a guy that doesn't seem to count with him. Competition means something different to women, maybe.

"Frank wants me to watch the video," he says, his voice getting even quieter. "Of that fight. He wants me to see what happened, blow by blow and hold by hold. He wants me to tell him where I went wrong." He reaches over and picks up her hand and looks at her tattoo. "This is healing up pretty good. Does it hurt?"

"Not bad – like a sunburn. How come you don't want to watch the video?"

He's quiet for long enough that she thinks he's going to evade the question. Then he says, "It was a really bad time. Lotta reasons. I knew that the MP's were waiting. And the night before, I had pushed Pop away so hard that he got drunk, I mean really shitfaced, and he was crying and talking about how we were all lost, and that..." he goes quiet again for a minute. "That he loved me. Me and Brendan. And it didn't make up for all the hell he put us through, and it sure didn't make up for all the hell he put Mom through, but it... it did a number on me. And then there I was in the cage with my brother and the brig waiting for me after, and the guilt of fucking up in Iraq, and I just hated Brendan. And I couldn't hate him." Another pause. He kisses her wrist, below the tattoo, and then touches his tongue to it.

"You think the emotional stuff messed with your focus?" She's trying to focus, herself, over the body buzz of his tongue on her wrist.

"Yeah. I think I could have blown right through every other guy in that tournament – well, Koba, maybe not Koba, that guy woulda been a bitch to fight – but it had to be Brendan. I couldn't see him straight with all the, the... shadows behind him. I mean..." he trails off, and kisses her wrist again.

"Stop distracting me," she says, completely unable to keep her voice sounding normal, and she gets a flash of his eyes toward her face. A little amusement there, like he knows how bad he's messing with her. "You mean your history was making shadows?"

He considers that. "Yeah. I think so."

"You just went through the whole thing with me, telling me what it was like. How different would it be to watch it?" she asks, really curious.

He shrugs. Kisses down her wrist to her palm and then her fingers, and she keeps forgetting to breathe, and then gasping when her reflexes prompt her for more oxygen. "How crazy is this making you?"

"Pretty crazy. Which I_ know _you can tell."

He smiles a little, not looking at her face, and speaks slowly. "I would hate watching myself be so wrecked. So fucking helpless. Because I remember what it felt like, and it was humiliating. It would just be more humiliating to watch it." He kisses the back of her hand this time. "Have you seen it?"

"No." She shakes her head, and his face relaxes just a little. _It must really be bad, if he's glad I haven't seen it._ She knows what patients with shoulders out of joint and torn muscles and tendons look like; they're in screaming pain, some of them, and some pass out, and some people throw up. To stay in there and let your brother keep hitting you when you can't protect yourself... and when you can't let yourself give in... She sighs.

And they haven't even had an argument yet; how is that going to go? Does he fight fair? Does he know how? "Tommy," she says. "I think you should watch it with Brendan. Just to remember how things are between you now."

He thinks about that, then nods, biting his lower lip. "Maybe. I'll see." He finally looks up at her face. "You know, I was thinkin' – we've never been on an actual date. Do you wanna go out?"

She blinks in surprise. "Sure." She gives it a minute. "But I'll tell you, I'm kinda past that sort of thing. I like it, yeah. But it doesn't matter to me all that much what we do. And you know you don't have to impress me like that, anyway."

"Fair enough," he says. "But what if I_ want_ to take you out and eat something nice and walk around holding your hand in public for awhile, that okay? I mean, you'll still have to drive."

It's been a long time since anybody asked her out, and it's pretty funny that he'd ask now, given that they've been doing their best to stress the mattress coils on her bed lately. But still. It's sweet. Very Tommy. "Yeah. I'd like that. And if makes you feel any better, you can have the keys." He smiles off to the side, that quick embarrassed little grin he does sometimes. He's so funny – at times he seems as awkward as a teenager, and then he can go all commanding-officer on her. Like in bed, he is _anything but shy_ there. But his ears have gone pink at the tips, just from asking her to go out in public with him.

"No, you can drive. I don't care." He looks back at her and gives her the smile she loves best – the sweet one he usually saves for Rosie and Emily.

They stay at the park a little while longer, until kids start leaving – on their bikes or skateboards, or climbing into minivans with mothers – and Tommy says he needs to go run. So they pack up the cloth and the cooler bag and head back to her house. Once there, he changes shorts and shoes, ditches the shirt, drinks some water, and stretches. "Oh, hey," he says, just before leaving, "will you wear something nice? Like a dress?"

She nods, and he takes off down the street, his ink catching the eye at fifty yards and farther. _Sexy tattooed bad boy_. As for what to wear... hmm. She's got three summer dresses, if you don't count that ancient raggedy white eyelet one, and she doesn't. He's seen the aqua one; the orange-red tribal print maxi displays a bit too much of her cleavage, and is really more of a beach cover-up anyway; the watermelon-pink cotton halter dress shows off her shoulders. Well, then, there's really no choice, is there?

There is something delightful about dressing up to go out, though. Clean lace underwear, touched-up pink nail polish on her toes, the silver disk pendant engraved with her name that she's had since she was ten. Perfume. Hair brushed and curls arranged (well, as far as possible). Little bit of gray eyeliner and some mascara, some pink lipstick. Pink dress, silver sandals. She's ready. She putters around the kitchen for a few minutes, putting away a few things and drinking some water, setting up the coffeemaker for tomorrow.

It's lovely to hear his heavy footsteps on the porch, and he just charges right up the stairs without coming into the kitchen. The shower goes on. She finds his running shoes on the mat by the front door. Unlike Mike, who would come in and drop his stuff randomly, Tommy's far neater with his things – both at Tess' house, and here. Mike had been military too, and his locker and uniform hook at the fire station were always pristine, all his gear just so. But at home? Shirt on the back of the couch, shoes in the middle of the living room floor, wallet and keys wherever he happened to be when he took them out of his pocket. And then he'd complain about the mess. _Gah_.

When Tommy comes back down the stairs again, he's freshly shaven, his hair's attractively tousled with a bit of gel, and he's wearing jeans and a spruce-green polo shirt she thinks might be Brendan's. His ocean-changeable eyes look greener today too. "You look nice," she says, though a more accurate description might be _beautiful_. Or _delicious_, that comes to mind too. He got some sun on his cheeks today, and he looks flushed and healthy and extremely happy.

He stops on the bottom step and looks her up and down. "_You_ look," he says, "well, let me put it like this: the way you look makes me want to _mess you up_. If you get what I mean." She does. Breathing is difficult there for a minute. Then he grins. "Later. I'm starving."

She tosses him the keys, and then he tosses them back, so she drives. Dinner is at a steak place close to downtown, not one of the fancy overpriced touristy ones, but not a dive either. They ask for one of the tables outside, and they've gotten there just in time, because the_ al fresco_ dining area is pretty crowded.

They eat shrimp cocktail and baked potatoes and steaks, and vegetables and salad, and she has a glass of Pinot Noir. They tell each other stories, just the way they did when they were talking on the phone every night before going to sleep. She talks about work, and the kids. He talks about Sparta III and his possible chances for that, and his unwillingness to look past it at the moment along with his knowledge that someday he'll have to have a different plan.

She suggests that he think about a college class or two, and is perplexed by the dirty look he shoots her. "Brendan said that, too," he says, and he sounds mad. "Like I'm _college_ material."

Why wouldn't he be? Community College of Philadelphia is not Harvard, and she didn't say he should study rocket science or brain surgery. And he's certainly not dumb. "Well," she says mildly, "it's not necessary for you to do something you don't want to do, but a couple of business classes never hurt anybody. Or Physiology, maybe, if you're thinking of keeping on with the training, either doing it yourself or teaching somebody else."

He shrugs, but he won't look at her. He's still eating – it takes a long time to put down the amount of food he needs to fuel his daily activity level – but there's an unsettled feeling to the table now.

Just then, her coworker Janine stops by the table and says hello. Kelly jumps up to hug her – Janine has been the most helpful of the other six nurses in the practice, almost like an older cousin or something – and to meet the lanky, fifty-ish man Janine introduces as Chris. Kelly knows who Chris is, of course, she's talked to Janine about personal stuff often enough. Kelly says, "This is my friend Tommy Conlon. Tommy, I work with Janine Phillips, and this is her husband Chris." Tommy rises and shakes hands, gravely, with a polite half-smile on his lips, and Kelly does not miss the way Janine's eyes skate appreciatively over Tommy's muscles and linger on his face. There's a bit of chitchat about how Chris and Janine are going to an outdoor concert at Franklin Park, and then some "enjoy your meal, nice to see you, hope the concert's good," well-wishing before Janine winks at Kelly and mouths, "_Handsome_," behind her hand, and she and Chris walk off.

Tommy starts right back in on his steamed vegetables and the rest of his steak without saying anything, and some set to his jaw, some indefinable precision in his movements, is telling Kelly that he's pissed off. She doesn't know why. But she'll be darned if she sits here silently on one of their three private evenings together and watches him smolder without at least asking what's wrong.

"Would you mind," she says, trying to keep her voice from sounding cranky, "telling me what is bugging you? And don't bother saying, 'Nothing,' because I know better, Conlon." She sips the last of the wine in her glass.

He finishes a bite and sets his utensils down. Drinks some water. Then looks up at her. His jaw works, and then he says, "I'm your _friend?_"

"Oh."

"Oh," he repeats, heavily sarcastic. "I'm only a friend."

"Well," she tells him, "I dunno, 'the guy sending me to paradise three times a day' seemed a little _much_ for a social situation, don'tcha think?" He just stares at her, and she sees on his face for real a hint of the menace she'd mistakenly seen there earlier, when it was a trick of the light. "I'd never even met her husband before. And what else was I going to call you? My beau? My lover? My boyfriend?" _Boyfriend_ seems particularly ludicrous to her; that's a word for high-schoolers. "I guess I could have said 'my date,' but that seems silly too."

He doesn't say anything, but there is a look on his face now that makes sense of Tess's description of him as "sullen." She tries to lighten the conversation somehow. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just that calling somebody your boyfriend once you're past thirty makes me think of Frau Blucher." She looks at his face again: nothing. "You know... Cloris Leachman? In 'Young Frankenstein'? Gene Wilder? 'He voz... my... boy frrriendt!'" She mimics Cloris' ridiculous German accent.

Still nothing. "Okay. I screwed that one up." She sighs. Leans across the table and puts her hand on his arm. "I am really sorry that bugged you. I just... I don't know how to do this now. I'm _divorced._ Last time I had a boyfriend was years ago, and it seems... I don't know... sort of high school. We – you and me – we are _so far_ beyond the kind of relationships I had with boyfriends that I don't even know what to call it."

He drops his eyes again and doesn't say anything. "Okay, Tommy, you're really starting to kinda scare me here. Because I don't understand, and you won't say."

He bites his lower lip, and sighs. "Look." His voice has gone all gravelly and lower-pitched than usual. "What you just said about frow whatsit – I didn't even _get _that. Not _one word_ of that made sense to me."

"It's a movie," she interrupts, but he keeps going.

"And it's like I'm not good enough for you guys, you and Brendan, you keep pushing college at me like I'm bringing down the IQ average of the group. Like I could even be _capable_ of college work. _Shit. _And you and me? We're 'beyond boyfriend'? Then how come you backed it all the way off to 'friend'?

Kelly takes a deep breath. _At least he's talking._ "Okay. Okay, first off? I'm sorry that I screwed this up. Really, truly sorry. Especially because I never meant to say anything that hurt your feelings."

"And don't treat me like a little kid, either," he says, roughly, leaning toward her across the table. "'Hurt my feelings,' _shit_. This is Dr. Phil crap."

"I did, though," she snaps back. "Call it I pissed you off, if you have to. Or I stepped all over your pride. What you keep _missing_ is that it wasn't something I set out to do."

He sits back and exhales through his nose. "Okay."

Looks like that's all the apology she's going to get. Well, she can be the grownup at the moment; her feelings aren't hurt. "Now the 'friend' thing. Look, I know Janine, and she knows me. And since she knows me, she knows that if I'm out having dinner with a male friend, I like him. She has _eyes_. She saw that I am crazy about you." He looks up, and the sullen expression is gone; his face is wary but hopeful. "She did, as a matter of fact, whisper to me that you were handsome. And I guaran-damn-tee you that the minute I walk into the office on Monday, which – my God, I am_ not _looking forward to that, spending eight hours plus away from you and getting teased into the bargain – the very minute I walk in, she's going to corner me and ask me sixty million questions about you, starting and ending with, 'So is he a good kisser?' Tommy, she _knows _how I feel about you. No matter what label I put on you."

He sits back a little in his chair. "Okay."

Seriously, that's all she's going to get? This must have been going on in his head for far longer than she's realized. "As for the college thing? I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. I like you the way you are. But I will point out that _you _were the one who said that you needed a plan for what you would do once this MMA deal was over. I threw out a suggestion. You don't have to take it. As for you thinking you can't handle college – I think you can. Brendan thinks you can. Come on, the Marine Corps does not hand out promotions to Staff Sergeant like they're candy, 'one for you and one for you and one for you.' I have zero doubt that it was well-deserved, and I know as well as you do that the criteria are seniority and intelligence and leadership and organizational ability. So don't give me this crap about me looking down on you because you don't have an education, because _I don't_. You're the one who is bothered by it."

She stops, and they just stare at each other over the table for a minute. She is close to tears; he looks stunned. Finally he sighs and says, "I forgot how mouthy you are, Doherty." She takes a breath to say something like, _well, I am_, and he says, "I'm sorry." Leans back across the table and takes her hand and says, "I'm sorry I was behaving like a dick, Kelly, I really am."

She squeezes his hand, and tells him, "You get a free pass on this one, Conlon. But you have to tell me what's going on with you. Because I don't know how your head works."

He holds her eyes with his and nods. "Yeah, okay. You might have to poke me some. That's not something that was... you know... safe. In my house. Or in the military."

"I get that." There's so much she wants to say, and she knows that if she says it she'll scare him to death. She's a talker, and he's not, and he's told her difficult stuff just now. There's just one thing she can't leave alone. "So what am I? I mean, how would you have introduced me?"

He shrugs a little. "I'd probably have said girlfriend and let it go. Didn't know that bugged you."

"It doesn't. 'Girlfriend' doesn't sound stupid to me like 'boyfriend' does, I don't know why. I was trying to leave you some dignity." She shakes her head and exaggerates a little. "'Man friend,' I could have said _that_, but I think that's even worse."

"That _is_ pretty bad," he agrees, and the corners of his mouth curve up.

It's not answering her real question. "So." She takes a deep breath and tries to keep her lips from trembling. "So, what – what are we? What am I to you?"

And his face goes sweet and serious, and his eyes do that thing where they open up what's behind them, and she can see all the way down. She can see his chest rising and falling even though she's looking into those ocean eyes of his, and he says, very softly, "Everything. You are everything."

She tries to hold back her tears, but two fall anyway, and then she whispers, "Can we go home now?" He nods, and the poor server who's been hovering two tables away finally comes and brings them the check. Tommy won't let her pay for dinner, so she hands him the keys and says, "Please, you drive."

"Right, you had wine," he says, and they hold hands all the way back to the car, and then they just stop walking and hold each other. No kissing, this moment is just too sweet for that.

They get in the car and drive home, silent. He pulls up in front of her house and turns to her, handing her the keys, and she does kiss him then, tenderly. But that opens the floodgates: within two minutes, the kissing has become voracious and heated, and she can't stand not being closer, so they get out and she unlocks the door, and they go in.

Upstairs on the bed, he's pressed against her insistently, hiking her skirt up and stroking her thighs, but she has a bedroom agenda for once. "Please," she says, "let me... I want to be in charge for awhile. Let me just..." and for a blunt and mouthy person, she's suddenly too shy to tell him what she wants.

"Anything," he says.

"Take your shirt off, please." That's easy enough, and she leans over to do what she's wanted to do for weeks, which is to kiss all his tattoos, and she wishes she could see his face when he realizes what she means to do, but his hissed intake of breath and the clutch of his hands on her waist are almost as good. She traces the lines with lips and tongue and fingers, kissing and stroking and tasting his skin. She starts at his right shoulder and moves across, but the minute she traces the last stroke on the serial number on his collarbone he puts his hands in her hair and pulls her mouth up to his, _so much for letting me be in charge_, she didn't even get to the other arm, and this kiss is completely out of control, almost like he's trying to consume her through her lips.

It pushes her out of control too, because there are other things she wants, and _now_. She leans back, breaking the kiss and jerking her hair out of his grip (losing a few hairs, ow, but what the hell). And then she kisses his chest, running her hands down all that good muscle until she gets to that tattoo on his side, the _till I die_ one, and he groans and moves her hand to the sturdy length of him under the jeans. She grips tight there and he swears, breathlessly, and while she's still kissing his tattoo, sliding her tongue over the Gothic letters, she unzips his jeans and tries to tug at them.

The jeans go nowhere until he lifts his hips, and then as she's finishing the tracery of letters with her mouth, they both pull off his jeans and boxers, and there he is in her hand, warm and stiff and full, and that's the _other_ thing she's been wanting, can't _believe_ she hasn't done this yet. But now she can't wait. Leans down and drags her tongue down the length of his shaft, feels it jump in her grasp, hears him groan again, huskier and more agonized this time. He's salty and musky and all masculine here, soft and hard at the same time, and having him in her mouth and her hand is making her just crazy.

It's not only driving _her _crazy, either. As she settles into a rhythm that pleases her, Tommy settles into a string of curse words that sounds like he's going through the dirty-word dictionary, interspersed with calling on God, Jesus, _Holy_ God, Jesus _Christ_, and then sweet-holy-Mary-Mother-of-_God,_ _stop_, Kelly, stop stop _stopstopstopstop_.

So she sits up, panting a little, head spinning, and watches him take himself in hand and squeeze, apparently a slow-down move. When his breathing is close to normal again, he opens his eyes and looks at her. "_Damn_. If I'd known what you were capable of I'd have been begging for that from the start." She laughs, and decides to finally get out of her dress. She unties the straps and lets it fall, tosses it over the back of a chair and turns back to the bed, where Tommy is giving her the eye again. "So, no bra," he observes. "I didn't know that, either."

"It's sewn in," she explains.

"Whatever. Lose the panties, too. And _come here_, woman."

More kissing this time, sweet and hot and delicious, and caresses, and his mouth gentle on her breasts and his hands exciting and not-so-gentle elsewhere, and she's shaking by the time he rolls her over onto her stomach and then pulls her up to her knees. "All the fantasies I've had about your ass, I can't _believe _we haven't done this already," he growls into her ear from close behind her, and she shudders with anticipation.

"What's with my ass anyway?" she asks, unable to breathe properly. This is new, him getting out a coherent sentence during sex, and she likes it.

"It's _round_." His hands are all over her, and then he's done talking. Driving inside her, pulling her back against him, and she's going to lose her mind, it's so good. At some point he leans up warm and close against her back, and something extraordinary happens. The pressure point inside changes, she feels like she's got to pee, and then she knows she's going to come instead, really hard, and his mouth is open on the back of her neck and she has no idea what she's saying, no idea at all, and the world explodes.

She's so mind-whacked she doesn't know he's finished too until he sort of topples them over onto their sides on the bed. "Oh," she says. "Wow. Whoa."

He laughs very softly into her ear and kisses her. "You really like that position, don't you?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Good. It's high up on my list too." He kisses her cheek again.

They lie there and breathe for awhile. She might be screwing things up again, but she has to say it. "Tommy? You know this is the easy part, right?"

"Whaddya mean?" he asks. Not mad, just asking.

"The sex. This is easy. Loving each other is going to be harder, you know that." He doesn't say anything, but he kisses her hair and she knows he's listening. "I mean, I'm going to get hurt and you're going to get hurt. Life is going to bang us around. And we both have these issues that are going to stick out and poke us and that's gonna hurt too. All we can do is hang on to each other, and be good to each other. Say we're sorry when we need to, and believe the best of each other."

"I'll try," he says, his voice sincere. It's lost the gravelly quality it has when he's mad or aroused, and he sounds so young.

"No," she says. "It's like Yoda. 'Do or do not. There is no try.' And I promise you."

"I promise you," he echoes, and kisses her one more time. "I love you. I wanna treat you right."

She thinks that maybe she just took a vow she hadn't intended to take again, and it's sort of scary but really beautiful, and she wants to tell him this too but his breathing changes and she knows he's asleep. _Men_. She shakes her head and puts her arm over his where it's holding her tight, and she smiles. They're together, in her bed, and they've both promised. It's enough. It's everything.

**A/N: Don't go looking for Wilson Park in Philadelphia. I made it up. And OH – if you know what song those lyrics about making the living worthwhile come from, please tell me! I can't unearth it with an internet search, but I could swear it was something my grandmother used to sing.**

**Can I just say? I am not enjoying writing the dragons. Dragons attack over the next couple of chapters, which I've already started before I posted this, just so I wouldn't leave something out of this segment. _Has_ to be done (YES IT DOES), but it's making me cry.**


	29. Chapter 29: The World Comes Back

**Ch 27: The World Comes Back...**

Kelly wakes sometime well past midnight, alone in her bed, and her first thought is, _He's gone. I knew he'd go_. Her second thought is, _No, he's just... downstairs. In the bathroom. In the kitchen maybe_.

She turns on the bedside lamp and sits up. It's gotten a little chilly in the bedroom, and she shivers. She's got a nightgown here somewhere... His duffel bag's still here in the bedroom. She breathes deep, holding the air in for a minute, then lets it out.

The shock of adrenaline hasn't left her, and she is wide awake. She puts on her nightgown and underwear and goes to the bathroom, then downstairs. Maybe he's... no. No, he's not here. _Don't cry, dumbass_, she tells herself. _That is stupid. _So she looks for signs of where he might have gone. No lights on, just the yellow glare from the streetlight outside. His shoes are not on the mat, and the house key has been removed from the carabiner clip that holds her other keys.

Her iPod is still in the speaker deck, and if she's going to be awake she might as well listen to it. She sorts through playlists, avoiding loud stuff because she would, eventually, like to get back to sleep, finds what she wants, sets it to Random, and curls up on the couch. She sits there hugging a throw pillow and thinking, while the iPod rolls through Sarah MacLachlan and Elvis Costello and Gavin DeGraw, through Colbie Caillat and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals and Robbie Robertson. Her chest aches. No, it's her heart inside her chest, missing him and afraid that it's already over.

Because right now, when she's not _with _him and she has time to just explore how she feels, she has to admit that she is still scared to death. Way way back when she first told Tess she thought Tommy was sexy (that word's so completely inadequate, it makes her roll her eyes now), Tess had been discomfited by the idea of them together, even if she hadn't quite said that out loud. And if Brendan had been less than pleased about the idea too, that makes her question her judgment.

As if her judgment on Mike hadn't been bad enough already. True, she has acknowledged that even if Tommy's impenetrable to other people, he shares more with her than he does with anyone else, and the fact that he does tell her is reassuring. But the _things_ he shares, about what he's experienced... they're horrifying. She wants to cry for him, for his loneliness and pain and fear and guilt, but even with that wish consuming her she still wonders if people who undergo horrible things are forever changed by them. She wonders if the delicate emotional workings inside are irrevocably damaged just the way electronic panels on appliances, once fried by lightning, never work properly again.

She wonders this, and then in her mind she sees him with the children, open and sweet, playful and protective and nurturing all at once. Every kid who meets him wants to be where he is; none of them are frightened of him.

And thinking of kids – she doubts that her boys have any objection to Tommy himself, judging by how comfortable they are with him, but will that change once they understand that he might be "taking Daddy's place"? Will he be fully bought-in to the idea of being a step-parent? Any divorced parent has to consider children in a plan to change the family dynamic by marrying again.

And she has to be honest here, too – that's what she wants. She is happy to go with the flow in a lot of matters, but not with her personal life. She likes things formal and clear, she likes the rights and privileges and responsibilities understood by all parties. And she cannot imagine either living with him for an extended period of time, unmarried, or having a loose liaison in which they live apart but have sex. Not when she's raising children. Other people can do that, she doesn't judge. But it is not for her.

How will Monday be? And how can she even bring it up, without overwhelming him or scaring him or making him angry? Because she's going to _have to_ bring it up. Not to discuss it would be unconscionable.

She's going to drive herself crazy with thinking. She should have thought _before_ now, but she only listened to her feelings. And now it's too late and she's so deep in love, waters closing over her head. Dammit.

He's been gone at least an hour and a quarter; he doesn't run that long in the mornings and she doesn't know what it means. Finally she gives up thinking about how long he's been gone, and just listens to the music instead. Crowded House comes on, "Weather With You," and while she's singing with it instead of thinking how to talk to Tommy, there are his footsteps on the porch, and the key in the door. He opens the door quietly, closes it quietly. Takes off his shoes in the dark and hangs the key back on the hook as the music seems to register with him, and he turns his head trying to see around the room.

"Couldn't sleep?" she asks, and then he sees her.

"No." He walks toward the couch, and he's shirtless and sweaty, breathing hard.

"Go running?"

"Yeah." There's a pause before he sits down on the edge of the coffee table. "I don't wanna mess up your couch, I'm pretty gross right now." She doesn't say anything, doesn't know what to say. "You couldn't sleep either?" He's trying to read her face, apparently. She shakes her head. "Why not?"

"Lot of stuff in my brain right now," she says. She'll let him ask, if he wants.

"Lot of stuff in mine too." There's a pause, and then he says, "I go running when I... have too much to deal with. When things get too big."

"I know."

"It's better than Percocets," he says, and she can tell he's still trying to read her. "Better for me, anyway. Doesn't exactly feel better, because Percocets _are the shit_, but at least it makes me feel like I'm getting something done." She still doesn't know what to say, she's too mixed up in her own feelings, but he goes on. "You ever take 'em? Percocets?"

"Yeah. Martin was a c-section baby. And then... with my arm. When it was broken."

"When Mike broke your arm," he corrects her.

"Yeah. And I couldn't wait to get off them because they made me feel fuzzy – I didn't like that."

"Oh."

"I don't like feeling numb. I need to feel things so I can understand them."

"That makes no sense to me." His voice isn't defensive the way it was earlier, it's puzzled. Like he's trying to figure her out without being upset that she's different than he is, and that gives her hope.

"You're a dude. Of course it makes no sense," she says.

He shivers suddenly. "Wow. Sorry, AC cooling off my sweat, I guess."

"It's not all that cool in here," she notes. "You're just sweaty." Does he know that his shirtless-and-sweaty state always drives her crazy? Can he tell?

"Yeah. It's pretty muggy out." There's a pause, and then he asks, "So what do you do? When you're stressed?"

"Listen to music. I dance sometimes, or go run, or hit the stationary bike at the gym, but during all of that, guess what else I'm doing?"

"Music. I got you." He stands up and holds his hands out to her. "Dance with me."

So she stands too, and takes his hands, and lets him pull her close. Puts her head on his chest (_mmmm_, fresh sweat on warm male skin, he smells good) and her arms around his waist, and they dance. It's not much more than just holding each other and swaying together, but it's slow dancing, so sweet, and she loves the feel of his heartbeat under her cheek, the feel of his cheek on her head. It's nearly 3:00 in the morning, and she's tired and wired and confused, but this is so lovely that she just relaxes into him, the warmth of him.

They dance through more music: David Archuleta's "Crush," Fleetwood Mac's lovely aching "Sara," Jason Mraz' "I Won't Give Up," Nickelback and Taylor Swift and Lady Antebellum, and she's gotten so sleepy she's closed her eyes but she won't give up just holding him in her arms, not for anything less close.

"Hey," he finally whispers to her. "You're about to fall over. Want to go back to bed?"

"Yes."

"Sleep or make love?" There's a scratchy quality to his whisper that tells her which option he would choose, and she pulls him close to confirm it, that he wants her. He does, oh he does, and that makes her want him too.

So even though she's tired, even though she's sore, she says, "Make love." Because she wants to hold him more than she wants sleep. She can feel the weekend slipping away, minutes rushing faster through the hourglass, and she wants to hold back time.

She turns off the iPod, holding his hand, and he follows her up the stairs, and they lie on the bed. She starts to reach for the lamp, to turn it off, and he reaches for her hand. "No. Please. Leave it on."

"Kiss me," she whispers, and he kisses her the way he first did, distracting her from the pain of her tattoo, all sweetness and heat, and the heat begins to build the longer the kisses go on. The kisses go slow and soft and deep, tongues touching and stroking, and his hands are warm on her breasts and it is delicious. She's aching and wet and she can't wait to get rid of her nightgown and anything else that might come between them. So the nightgown and the shorts hit the floor, and he feels good in her hands, and his mouth feels good on her nipples, and when he says her name with so much longing she says, "Please, please now." They're still lying side by side on the bed, and when she angles her thighs apart he presses inside her.

He's gentle, but she can't hold back a hiss of discomfort. "I'm a little sore," she explains, pulling him closer with her legs around his back, and he stops moving.

"Do I need to stop?" He kisses her forehead, and she shakes her head no. "Good, 'cause I can't."

The loving is sweet this way, slow and tender and full of embraces and kisses, and she's not that sore after all. He slides his hand down between their bodies to touch her, and as she gets closer to her pleasure and her eyes start to close, he whispers, "No, look at me." It's difficult to keep her eyes open as her climax hits, but she does, she looks right into his eyes and they're dark with desire, warm with love. And then he rolls her gently to her back and thrusts deeply into her, moving faster than before, and she knows he's close by how hard he feels inside her. "Tell me it will be okay," he whispers, and she says _it will, _knowing it really will be okay if they can just hang on to each other. If they can hold on to this and not let all the details get in the way. "Tell me we'll be together," he whispers, and his eyes are closed.

"We'll be together," she says. "I love you."

And he sets his forehead hard against hers and groans, and there is that sudden heat deep inside her body. "Oh," he whispers, "Kelly, I love you." She holds him tightly as she can, overwhelmed. It can't be this good, it can't stay this good. Can it? Is this a miracle?

She's so sleepy now she barely feels him roll over to his side and pull her against him as he reaches across to turn off the light. But she feels complete, and just before she drifts off she hears in her head a song her mama used to play on the record player, Olivia Newton-John singing the lyrics, "All I need is the air that I breathe, and to love you..."

O : O : O :

They sleep late. When he wakes up it's nearly ten and he's alone in the bed, but he can hear the shower. It's too late for church today, and maybe she'll make some breakfast.

But he's been letting her prepare food all weekend, and it would probably be fairer for him to cook this morning. He can do breakfast. He gets up and throws on casual clothes, then slips down to the kitchen. He's really thirsty, so he drinks two big cups of water out of one of her Penn State stadium cups, and wonders what it would have been like to go to college. His grades hadn't been bad in Pittsburgh, mostly Bs with an A or two, maybe a C in English during wrestling season but a B for the year. His grades hadn't been as good as Brendan's but they weren't bad either; once he and Mom had got to Tacoma and he'd had to start working after school, they'd dropped to C's with the occasional B. He's not college material, obviously, since he's so much older now.

She's already set up the coffeemaker, so he gets that started and then starts putting together the ingredients for Tess' Outstanding Oatmeal (old-fashioned rolled oats, pecans, cinnamon, dried cranberries, chopped apple – Kelly must know the recipe, or at least eat the same kind of thing). He starts that, and then cooks some turkey bacon in the microwave. He starts heating a pan for eggs, and then Kelly's in the kitchen and hugging him from behind.

"I feel sort of wicked, lounging in bed with you all morning and skipping church. And look at you, making breakfast here! Decadent. Good Lord, what did I do to deserve all this?" she asks, and he has to laugh.

"Fed me all weekend, what'd ya think?"

"_I _think it was gratitude for the blow job," she says, and kisses his shoulder, and he laughs again as he's stirring the oatmeal.

"Well, come to think of it," he says, pretending to consider, and she pokes his side. "Don't _do _that, I'm cooking. If I burn my fingers, I'll be restricted in the bedroom and _you'd_ regret it." This time she laughs, but she puts her arms back around his waist. "So where's your gratitude, woman? You're outscoring me in bed, like, two to one."

"Nah, you still owe me, because I'm making it easy on you."

"How so?" It's tough to crack eggs with a girl's arms around your waist, but he manages.

"By being easy."

"_Ohhh_, no. I'm just good." And while he's whisking eggs and egg whites together, he waits for her to remember that conversation with Tess from weeks ago, and fuss at him for eavesdropping, and then he can tell her how horny he got listening to her talk about sex.

There's a pause. "Well. I guess twenty-three women can't be wrong, can they?" she says against his back, and she's trying for playful but not quite making it.

"Are you jealous?" he says, drizzling a little bit of olive oil into the saute pan. On the one hand, he understands, he really does – even now he would like to punch hell out of Mike Porter for cheating on her. But on the other hand, the other girls he's slept with have so little in common with Kelly and the way he feels about her, he doesn't quite see how his past could bother her so much.

"Yes." She says it flat-out, and squeezes him a little tighter before letting go. "I know. It's totally irrational. You didn't even know me then."

"That's right." He pours the egg/egg white mixture into the pan and stirs it around with the spatula. "Most of 'em I don't even remember much about. They're not you, you never have to worry about that. Okay?" The eggs are done, so he scoops them onto the turkey-bacon plate and hands it to her. "Oatmeal ought to be done about the time we finish eating that."

So then there's breakfast, and the sun comes in the window behind her and turns the tips of her curls golden brown, so that she looks something like the angel picture on the preschool wall at church when he was a kid. He goes and gets the oatmeal and two bowls.

"Thank you, this looks great. You finally get to sleep okay?" she asks.

"Yeah." It had taken awhile, and he wonders if she knows how nervous the prospect of Monday is making him. What is going to change? What will go back to the way it was? He'd like to _say_ he doesn't care what people will think, but it's not true. He wouldn't give a shit what Jose would say about it, or that dickhead Mike, but Brendan? He cares about how seriously pissed-off Brendan is going to be. He even cares about what Tess will say, mostly because Kelly loves Tess and Kelly cares what Tess thinks. And then there's Jack and Martin. How weird are they going to find it, seeing Tommy here when they go to bed?

And how is that even going to work? He can't just announce that he's moving in, no matter how much he'd like to. He can't throw Brendan's charity back in his face – "Thanks for the room, bro, but I'm moving in with my girlfriend now?" No. Would he come over after the kids are asleep, stay all night, get up and leave early? That's stupid and evasive, and it would feel like a lie. He's had _fucking enough_ of that kind of thing.

If it was up to him, he'd ask her to marry him right now, but it's probably too soon. Also, he has enough money to provide for himself, if he lives on his brother's charity, but not for anyone else. On top of that? He's still terrified that Pop's fisty monster sleeps inside him too, to be unleashed on family when he least expects it.

"Tommy?" She's got her head tilted over, and she's giving him a searching, intense look. "What's going on in your head?"

"What's going on in yours?" he shoots back.

"Right now?" He nods, and forks up some egg. "I sort to hesitate to dump all this on you. I mean, it's this huge list of stuff on my mind, so, you know... feel free to tune out." She bites her lip, and in spite of everything, all the worry that's suddenly on her face, she looks so beautiful and it's good to know he's not the only one with the willies. "Okay. One, Monday... I don't know how we're going to handle things with the boys here. I'm not really comfortable with you moving in here, even assuming that you would want to. I think we can work something out, I think we can come up with an arrangement we can live with, but we have to talk about it, and talking about it makes me nervous because I don't know... Two, I don't know what you want, I mean, out of this – " she waves her hand back and forth between them, " – out of this _Us_ thing. Because there is _Us_, and it's important and I can't imagine living without it, but I don't even know what _Us_ looks like, okay?, so we have to figure that out. Three, I have issues. I have issues with cheating and with flashbacks and with not being able to say what I really want and when something is not okay and with excusing too much when I love somebody."

He's about to say that her issues don't seem so big to him when she takes a deep breath and starts talking again. "Four, _you_ have issues. I think you have some PTSD, I'm pretty sure you're dealing with survivor guilt, and we know your childhood was difficult. I think a professional counselor would help you but you won't see one, and I worry about that. Five, it might not be fair to ask you to be a parent – to just dump you into that position and ask you to be responsible for two whole other little people. Six, apparently Brendan and Tess don't really approve of the idea, and that makes me think I might be nuts even though I know how_ I _feel. Seven – "

She stops. Smiles a little at him. "There's more, but I think I'll stop there because you're starting to have that deer-in-the-headlights look. I'm really not trying to scare you. And I think we can work through this stuff, as much as there is, because how I feel..." she closes her eyes for a minute, "how I feel about you, it is going to be so worth getting past this stuff."

Whoa. Women. "One person can't be thinking all that at once, they'd explode."

"No, I'm okay. I mean, it's keeping me up at night, obviously, but I'm not gonna explode. I think it really will be okay, if we can just hang on to each other and be patient."

_Great_. He sucks at patience. She even said that herself.

He sighs, and finally eats the bite of eggs has been cooling on his fork for the past several minutes. What had once seemed simple – love – now seems like crossing a desert. So much work, so much risk. Is it worth it, especially when you don't really believe that you'll get to the other side? He _wants _to, he wants to be with her and work through all the shit, but since most of it is his shit and not hers, is it fair to ask her to commit herself to the desert? Thinking about all this, he methodically eats the rest of his breakfast, and it's only when he finishes his coffee that he looks up and realizes that she's been waiting all this time for him to say something.

"Sorry. I was just all up in my head there."

"I know, you do that sometimes. It's okay." She still has food on her plate she's been playing with instead of eating.

"I want us to get things worked out," he tells her, past the lump in his throat. "I want us to be together." She closes her eyes, exhales, smiles, and he doesn't want to tell her that he doesn't think it will work. He doesn't think her reward is enough, because what she'd be getting would be him, and is that worth it? Probably not. He'll be selfish and just let himself believe. "Hey, I need a shower. Let me get this cleaned up, and I'll go hop in."

"I'll do it," she says. "I've showered and _you _made breakfast, the least I can do is clean up."

"You sure?" She nods. So he goes upstairs and brushes his teeth, and is a little puzzled by the color of his pee – dark yellow, almost orange. Wonder if he's eaten something recently that would make him pee orange? He shrugs and drinks another cup of water before getting into the shower.

He gets dressed and makes up the bed, then goes downstairs wondering if he should ask her about the orange pee. She is a nurse, after all... nah. Too weird.

She's on her cell phone when he finds her in the kitchen, dumping the coffee grounds with one hand and holding the phone with the other. "No, Mama, you sent me a $10 bill in my birthday card. It wasn't a check.

"Yes, I'm sure. It doesn't matter, Mama, I just called to wish Fred a happy Father's Day. Can I talk to him?

"I'm sorry he's not feeling well. Should I call later?

"Okay, well, you just pass on my good wishes to him, okay, Mama? Yes, I'll try to come bring the boys and see you soon. Maybe next month. Yes. I love you, too. 'Bye."

She clicks her cell phone shut and rolls her eyes at Tommy. "Mama's all upset because I haven't cashed the $50 check she supposedly sent me for my birthday, which she did not actually send, and Lord knows where that went or if she even wrote it or just thinks she did. And Fred has the flu, which makes me especially glad I did not try to go visit them this weekend, particularly in light of how I _have_ spent the weekend." She smiles, and he takes her in his arms.

"You smell nice. You always smell nice," he tells her, which is true. "And I should probably call Pop."

"Your cell phone was ringing earlier," she says. "Twice, actually."

"I'll check it." He left his cell phone on the coffee table last night, along with his key to Brendan's house. The cell has two missed calls – one from Pop, and one from Frank. He calls his voice mail; Pop doesn't text, but Frank usually does unless he's got something too complicated to tell Tommy. Pop's message says hello and that he's sorry he missed Tommy. Frank's message says call him as soon as possible, but it's Father's Day, he's got to call Pop first.

So he dials Pop's number and explains that he'd been in the shower earlier. They talk a few minutes, just "how's the weather?" and "work going okay?" and "how are things?" and Tommy, through a narrowing of his throat, tells Pop "Happy Father's Day."

"Wish you could be here," Paddy says. "Not – I'm not, I'm not guilt-tripping you. I know you're busy. I just – your brother's coming by for awhile after Mass, and I just wish you were here too."

"I wish I could be there too," he says. Not that he'd have missed being with Kelly this weekend, not for Pop, not even for the entire universe, but yeah, right now it would be sort of good to be in the house with Brendan and Pop.

"Hey, now, if you see that Miss Kelly, tell her I said hello," Pop says, and he sounds perfectly matter-of-fact, but there is something hiding behind the words, some kind of lightness, some kind of _happy. _ Happy, from _Pop_, and Tommy's suspicious but on second thought, what does it matter? Pop has already guessed how he feels.

"I'll tell her. And I'm sure she'd say hi back."

"Well, that's good," Pop says. "Listen, I have a pot pie in the oven so I'm gonna go get that out and have lunch before Brendan gets here, but you have a good day too, son."

"Thanks." He hesitates a minute, because he can't quite say _I love you_ to his father, but neither can Paddy say it out loud. "Good to talk to you, Pop." They say their goodbyes and Tommy hangs up. He doesn't want to think much about his father's attempt at fatherhood, not with the prospect of step-fathering Jack and Martin on his doorstep, because that has equal shares of fear and joy racing around in his head. He sighs.

Now to call Frank. He dials, and walks back into the dining room where Kelly's taking the tablecloth off the table and tossing it down to the laundry room, then getting a clean cloth out of the sideboard cabinet and smoothing it onto the table. "Hey, Frank, it's Tommy. What's up?"

"Oh good. Listen, you busy tonight?"

"Um... why?"

"There's an opening for a fight. Guy was scheduled for the middleweight matchup, but he was in a minor car wreck last night and he can't fight. He'll be okay, just a broken arm, but of course he's not up to a bout, and you had been wanting a fight."

_Awesome. _"Yeah, I'll do it. You got details?"

"Good," Frank says. "North Philly, this evening. Listen, let me call Andy and confirm, and then I'll call you right back, okay? Let me lock up the space for you so he doesn't get antsy."

"Sure." He hangs up and paces a little.

Kelly comes back downstairs with a laundry basket full of dirty clothes, and peeks into the dining room. "Hey, can I toss your dirty stuff in with mine?"

"Any time you want, baby," he says, and laughs at the way she rolls her eyes. "Thanks." She just shakes her head and goes downstairs, presumably to do some laundry, and his phone rings again.

When he answers, Frank starts giving him details: _North Philly. Amateur program. Six pm weigh-in, fights start at eight. Here's the address of the union hall._

"Okay, got it. So who's this guy I'm fighting?"

"Jason Sobieski. Out of Dragon's Den Fight Club over in West Philly, that's Alan Milton's gym. It's a silly macho name for a gym, if you ask me, but Alan's a solid coach and that's a solid program. Hang on a sec, let me look up his stats. Definitely amateur... yeah, okay: he's 25 years old, listed as 5'11" tall, 180 pounds which means he's probably heavier. Nine amateur fights since he got on the circuit last fall, and he's six-and-three."

"Got it." So the guy's got a couple inches on him height-wise, but they're about the same weight. And he's beatable.

"Now, listen – I can't be there. I'm sorry, but I'm visiting my dad at my sister's house in Springfield, and I won't be back until late, probably after midnight. But you'll be fine."

"Well, that sucks."

"I know. I'm sorry. Ask for Andy Gwilliam at the back door. Andy's a good friend of mine, and he knows you're one of my guys but he's not going to make a big deal out of it. They've got decent facilities at this event; it's small but they'll have dressing rooms and adequate medical personnel."

"That's good. They have somebody available to tape hands?" He vaguely hears Kelly come back into the dining room.

"Yeah, but Brendan can do that for you."

"He won't be there, he's still outta town."

"Oh yeah. I forgot. Listen, Tommy," and Frank's voice gets serious. "I really do not want you recognized if it is at all avoidable. Like... do things differently than you did at Sparta, okay? I got you some walkout music, so swagger around some, don't come out in a hoodie, stay in the cage until the winner's called... you know. Can't do anything about the tattoos so my whole incognito strategy might get blown anyway, but lots of pros do this, just to keep their hand in. I don't expect you'll have any trouble, but if you do – well, just don't destroy your guy. And don't get hurt."

"Ha. Funny. What's the format?"

"Cage. Straight amateur, six weight classes and they're fightin' all of them tonight: Feather, Light, Welter, Middle, Light Heavy, and Heavy. No Bantam, no Super Heavy. One matchup at each weight class. No strike restrictions, but you'll wear headgear."

"Headgear? I hate that."

"I know. But Andy had a fighter get seriously hurt at one of these once, and he insists on it. It's also why they don't fight Super Heavies at this event. And look at it this way, Tommy, I think you'll do better with headgear than with strike restrictions – I think that would frustrate you and defeat the whole steam-blowing purpose."

"Yeah, okay. Frank? What name am I fighting under?"

And Frank chuckles, deeply and evilly amused. "You're gonna love this one: you are Casey 'The Crusher' Finnegan, middleweight. You have no official amateur fight record."

"_What?_"

"You heard me. Go get 'em, Crusher." Frank laughs again. "Really, you'll be fine. Brendan spent a lot of time working these little fights, getting ready for Sparta, and you're more rounded as a fighter than he was at the time."

"Any advice?"

"Nah, not for you. You're well past ready. Eat some carbs today – you should make your weigh-in just fine, you were actually underlimit about three pounds on Friday. Just feel him out, take the openings, punch _through_, work your hips if you're on the mat. Relax. Watch the angles. Control the pace. Move or die. All basic stuff, you could probably do it in your sleep. You don't need me." And Frank sounds confident. "You gonna have anybody there for you?"

"Yeah, a friend." At least, he assumes Kelly will take him.

"Ahhh, a _friend_. Text me and let me know how it goes, all right?"

"Sure."

"Okay then. Go put the hurt on, and I'll see you tomorrow morning. Take it easy today, okay?"

"Frank?" He's gotta say it.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"Yeah, no problem."

Tommy closes his cell phone. He'd feel better if somebody who knew anything about fights was going to be there, but he's fought on his own before. He'd spent some weeks earning $50 a fight in bar parking lots, right after he'd gotten out of Iraq, fighting under Manny's name and taking every hit as something he deserved.

He's a little surprised to see how pale Kelly is, when he looks up and sees her standing behind a chair, her hands white-knuckled on the chairback. "What's wrong?"

"You're fighting tonight?" she says.

"Yeah." He'd taken it for granted that she'd want to go, would want to see him do what he does, but she looks faintly green. "Fillin' in for somebody last-minute. Frank can't be there. I need a ride. Will you take me? Please."

She nods, looking down at the table. "Where? And what time do you need to be there?"

Her voice sounds funny, too much breath in it and absolutely no excitement at all.

"North Philly. Gotta weigh in at six. Fights start at eight, and they'll probably get to mine around nine, nine-thirty, somewhere in there. I can leave after."

"Okay. And what do I have to do?"

"Nothing much. I need lots of complex carbs today, but if you don't feel like cooking or something I can manage it. Pasta, oatmeal, potatoes. That sort of thing, plus some lean protein and vegetables. The stuff you usually cook anyway."

"I don't mind cooking. And when we get there?"

"Nothing. You can just watch the fights. Take me to the hospital if I need it." He was half kidding about the hospital, but her eyes get big. "No, I'm kidding. It will be fine." Wow, she's jumpy about it. "You ever been to a fight?"

She shakes her head.

"You're not looking forward to this?"

She shakes her head again.

Okay. That's... hmm. Okay, it's weird. Besides which, he's seen her screaming at the TV during baseball games, and he knows she likes football. Five'll get you twenty she gets hooked on the fights once she's seen a couple. And he'll be honest: he wants her to see him in the cage, to see him doing what comes so easy. "It would mean a lot to me," he tells her.

She nods and takes a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, I'll be there."


	30. Chapter 30: With a Vengeance

**Ch 30: ...With a Vengeance**

**A/N: Sorry for posting delay. This one's long, and it's been a real _bugger_ to write, not only because of the dragons but also because it required so much darn research. (If I knew anything about fighting, this would have been far easier.) **

**Prepare your heat shields, please. If you have violence or sexual violence triggers, you might want to skip this one. It's not particularly graphic, but it's pretty clear what's going on.**

There's a big banner sign out front of the transit workers' union hall, stretched between two poles: NORTH PHILLY SUNDAY SLAMMER 8 PM JULY 12. This must be it. Frank had said he was supposed to go around to the back and ask for Andy Gwilliam, and they'd have a dressing area with a warmup space. He's brought his jump rope, his gloves, and his favorite red shorts; they're supposed to have a couple of wrap guys, a couple of cutmen, an EMT and a doctor on hand to provide any necessary services. He'll need a wrap guy for sure, and he hopes they've got somebody competent. "Around the back and drop me off," he says to Kelly, but she doesn't drive to the back of the building. Instead, she pulls to the far side of the parking lot and turns in her seat to face him.

"I'll take you over there in a minute," she says, and now that the late afternoon sun is falling onto her face through the windshield he can see that she's really pale. Her freckles are standing out.

"Don't worry, baby," he tells her. "Really. Really, I'll be fine."

"I don't how you can even say that," she says. "Because you don't know."

_Jesus_. "Okay. You're right, I don't know for sure. But I know me." He puts a finger under her chin. "Kelly, this is what I do. It's _what I do_, and I'm good at it. So don't stress, okay? It'll make _me_ worry, and that ain't good."

She sighs. She looks straight at him. Nods. "I'm gonna have to take your word for it and just trust you on this one." She says it like it's words somebody taught her, not something she believes, but she's got the way of it in her head at least.

"That's right. Okay, so I'm gonna go weigh in," Tommy says, "and then I can eat, and it's probably best for me to go on into my dressing room and prepare. Warm up a little, that sort of thing."

"I can't come in there with you, can I?"

He makes a face. "You could." He doesn't want to tell her no, but he really won't be able to get his head in the right spot if she's sitting in there with him.

"But that would distract you."

He smiles a little. "You're a distracting woman, Doherty." And then he drops the smile for a serious look into her eyes. "I need to focus, okay? It's not that I don't want you around."

She's still pale. "It's fine, I understand. So I hang out inside and just watch. Will I get to be up front to see you?"

"Yeah, I'll get you a pass."

"Kiss me," she says, suddenly, her eyes so open and beautiful, and he leans over and into her, holding her face with his hand, and the kisses are so sweet. He wants to leave her with that memory of sweetness, because there's no room for sweetness in the cage, and she's so nervous already. Finally he pulls back, antsy that he might be late, and checks the dashboard clock. 5:52, he's okay on time but he's got to go very soon. She says, "Wait just a minute," and touches his face, thumbs sliding across his cheekbones and one finger down his nose, and then across his mouth. Then she smiles, almost sadly, and kisses him one more time before letting go.

"Listen, I'll be back." He gets out of the car and jogs toward the back of the building. _God, she's jumpy. _Some little twinge of worry that he's missing something important twists in his gut, but then he's inside, meeting Frank's buddy Andy, registering, getting assigned a little cubicle in a back room, and stripping down to shorts for the weigh-in. They don't make a production of it here, not like the big fights – just some officials standing around. No cameras or sportswriters, no posturing or trash-talking, no fans standing around hoping somebody starts a scuffle early, thank God. He hops on the medical scales set up in the middle of the floor, watches the red digital numbers flash up to 183.2 pounds. One of the officials repeats the number, writes it down, says okay, and he steps off. "I'm good to go hang for awhile, right?"

"That's right," Frank's friend Andy says.

"Hey, I got a friend," he starts to ask, and Andy points to a basket full of lanyard passes.

"Take up to to six," Andy says. "We're charging admission because this is a fundraiser for amateur programs at participating gyms, but these will get your buddies up close."

"Okay, thanks," Tommy tells him, and takes one. Goes back to the cubicle that's his and wishes again that Brendan was here. Or Frank. He pulls his tee-shirt back on and then his sandals, and gets his cell phone out. There's a message on it, from Frank, something to the effect that Jose would be there in time for the fight, and Marco was planning on coming to watch.

_Thanks_, he texts back to Frank. He'd text Jose if he had Jose's number, but he doesn't.

He grabs his wallet and heads out, looking for Kelly. She's listening to music, he can tell even from halfway across the parking lot, because she's got her eyes closed and she's bopping around in the seat. And then, Jose pulls up in his beat-up white Buick that's seen better days, parks, and honks the horn. He leans out the window. "Hey, 'Crusher'!"

Tommy just shakes his head, but he comes over to Jose's car and says hey to Jose, and to Marco, sitting in the passenger seat. "I can get you guys ringside passes if you want."

Marco says thanks, and Jose says, "No, man, I'm gonna be with you in warmups, okay? At least until right after your fight's over, and then I gotta get home. Frank gave me a short list of stuff to go over with you."

Christ, does Frank _ever_ stop talking? Even when he's not actually there? Tommy rolls his eyes a little, but he really is grateful Jose will be with him. "Thanks. Hey – I got somebody I want you to meet." He points. "Over there in the blue Corolla. My girlfriend Kelly, come and say hi." Marco gives Jose a startled glance, but Jose smiles.

"Saw her out the window yesterday. She's cute. Yeah, we'll come say hello."

Tommy walks over with the guys, and Kelly is banging away at the steering wheel and singing with her eyes closed, a song he actually knows the lyrics to for once: Delbert McClinton, "Every Time I Roll the Dice," and that's a song that could be about Kelly, the way she makes him feel.

_She got a lock on the door, but she gave me a key_

_She don't walk the floor, but she worries about me_

_Her love has no strings, shackles or chains,_

_but I'm holdin' on for dear life_

_She's like rollin' a seven every time I roll the dice_

He leans in her open window and sings a little with her – well, "sing" is stretching it where he's concerned – and her eyes pop open and she laughs out loud. "You can't sing, Conlon," she says, and he just grins at her.

While Delbert's jamming through the second verse Tommy opens her door and says, "Come say hi." So she gets out and he introduces the three of them to each other, and watches her smile and shake hands. She's got her color back, anyway, probably from singing, and if he didn't already know that Jose was married and Marco's got a girl (Marco's always got a girl, he changes them like he changes his socks), he'd be worried about the way they smile back.

Kelly looks beautiful. Earlier she'd asked him what she should wear, and he'd shrugged, having absolutely no idea what girls wear to these things. He's always wearing a cup and shorts, and that's all he knows. She'd frowned. Asked what color shorts he was wearing, and then stated that she'd wear a top to match so there'd be no question who she was there to root for. It had made him laugh, and although it still seems a little silly to him, there must be something to it. Schools have team colors. And didn't medieval ladies dress in their knights' colors? So she's wearing jeans and this red sleeveless top that has sequins on it, and it's not very bare but the v-neck is low enough to show a little bit of her beautiful breasts and the valley between. The back is cut low so you can even see her _Stronger_ shoulder tattoo, which is _completely_ turning him on, and she looks casual and pretty and extremely fuckable... and if he doesn't cool it with the staring his head will never get into the fight.

Kelly gets back into the car to grab the cooler bag and her jacket, and to roll up windows, and then the four of them walk in through the back so Tommy can eat and they can get those lanyard friends-and-family passes. Tommy sits on the floor and chows through two of Kelly's roast beef/red pepper sandwiches like she made the day before, drinks some water, and then he lies back to digest. Kelly talks to Jose about his wife Anita and their three kids, how the oldest one is in a program for advanced readers and doing so well that they're thinking about sending him to private school.

"Hey, Marco," Tommy says. "C'mere a minute." Marco leans over. "Listen, will you look after Kelly for me, okay? She's never been to one of these. And I'm not sure why, but she's got the wind up about it and she might need a friend. Tell her what's going on, explain stuff, get her a drink so she doesn't have to fight through the crowds, that kinda thing."

"Yeah, sure," Marco says, "no problem."

He grins, sly dog, and Tommy points a warning finger at him. "No making time with my girl, man." Marco waggles his eyebrows and grins bigger, and Tommy narrows his eyes, his no-bullshit look, and says, "_Watch it._"

And Marco laughs out loud, drawing curious looks from Jose and Kelly. He says to Tommy, "Wouldn't work anyway, I've seen the way she looks at you."

"Yeah, well... you just keep that in mind."

Tommy relaxes there on the floor mat, head on his duffel bag, thinking about the afternoon. He'd told Kelly apologetically that he probably should take it easy the rest of the day, nothing strenuous (meaning no sex), and she'd gotten a wicked little grin and said, "Fine, later for you." She'd done laundry – including some of his clothes – and made an enormous bowl of pasta-veggie salad with grilled chicken for lunch. And after their late lunch, they'd cuddled up on the couch and just listened to music for awhile, or she'd listened, and he'd just let the music flow past him while he held on to her and wondered how in the _hell_ they are going to work this when the boys come home.

He still doesn't know. And because he'd asked for a peaceful afternoon they haven't talked about anything and it's all up in the air. Which is, he guesses, how it needs to be today so he can focus, but the uncertainty is there in the back of his mind, looming like tomorrow's patrol through insurgent-occupied territory.

Kelly listens to some _weird shit_, she really does. Seriously old stuff like Tony Bennett and Billie Holliday, and Elvis, and she loves Tom Petty and Van Halen, and then 90s R&B, 80s pop, Muse, Sarah MacLachlan, Fleetwood Mac, guitar boys like Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Stevie Ray Vaughn, Brian Setzer and Lenny Kravitz, and apparently she's got a real lech for Gavin DeGraw because he kept popping up every fifth song or something close to it.

He dozes off, and when he wakes up it's past 7:30 and time to wrap his hands and then a little warmup to get the blood flowing. Later, he'll do his meditation thing, but not until closer to time. He gets up and reaches for the water bottle.

"Ready to tape?" Jose asks, and he nods, sipping.

"Got your pass?" he asks Kelly, and she lifts it out to show him. "Well, I gotta get to work. I'll see you later, okay? You can come back here after my fight, just hang on to the pass and show it to the event staff guys."

"Okay." She smiles as she's walking over to him, and he can tell she's forcing it a little but she's not miserable, just nervous.

"_Quit worrying_," he says to her, quietly, and pulls her close. "It's gonna be fine. Kiss me for luck, baby." So she does, firm and quick, and she smiles again and waves over her shoulder as she's walking out with Marco. He watches her go and tries not to think about the _later_, because she looks so great and he needs to focus.

After his hands are wrapped, Jose sets him to a little jump rope warmup. Even here in the back you can hear the crowd noise, sounds like the room's getting full. Probably good for the event. He never goes to these things, the fights. Not even the big ones. He would rather watch tape afterward; he hates the hype and the trash-talking and the guys in the audience who think they're tough enough to take you. After he's warm, he does some stretches, concentrating on his back and his legs because those are the muscles that get really stressed in holds. The featherweight fighters were announced right at eight, and you can hear the hooting and shrieks. It takes a little while to have all the official checks done and make sure everybody's ready to go, but once they start, it doesn't take all that long. By twenty after, there's cheering, so obviously the first matchup has gone all three rounds and the winner is announced by decision. He can hear it over the loudspeaker.

An official in a yellow Event Staff shirt comes by and pokes his head in the door. "Anything I can get you guys? Equipment, or water, or anything?"

Jose looks at Tommy, stretching on the mat. He shakes his head, so Jose says, "Nah, man, we're good, thanks." The official nods, and closes the door.

He stretches until they start the lightweight fight, and then gets up and spars a bit with Jose, who's got the pads. Jose's reminding him to dance, "Move, move, move," and Tommy joins in with him on Frank's chant, "Move or die." Jose laughs a little. "Yeah, it's a verbal habit now. Lookin' good there, 'Crusher'. I don't know that you really need me, but Frank wanted you to have a guy in your corner since you ain't fought for awhile."

Tommy just nods, and they go back to jab-and-duck patterns. All the while he's thinking that he's not that interested in making this fight about punching power, not this time. It's too much fun to watch the fight just develop on different levels, and too much fun to use all the skills he's got rather than just going in throwing his fists around. He'll see. If his opponent's really dangerous he can be more aggressive.

The second fight ends pretty quickly, in the second round, but from the noise it sounds like one of the guys needed some medical help there in the cage, and it takes awhile for things to get settled and that winner to be announced, some dude from Russo's Gym near downtown.

When the third fight starts, they knock off the sparring and Tommy goes over to the wall to put his feet up against it and chill. He closes his eyes and sees himself landing strikes, twisting out of holds, taking his opponent down. Runs through several scenarios for how the fight could go. Then he takes a minute to think about Manny.

The yellow-shirted official comes back in to escort him to the bathroom in the rear of the building so he can pee in the cup. Looks like they're not taking any chances even with this amateur fight. Which is fine, he's still clean. He throws on his black UFC Pride tee-shirt that had once been Brendan's; it's so ancient that it's frayed at the collar and very soft.

He wouldn't tell Brendan this, but there's something old and sweet in wearing his big brother's hand-me-downs again, something of his brother's steadiness and confidence in the shirt, and he likes it that way.

The third fight ended a few minutes ago, with the guy in green shorts tapping out of a vicious neckhold and the guy from a Southside gym victorious. Tommy bounces around a little on his toes, moves his head around to keep his neck loose, works his shoulders. The left one feels good these days – they did a good repair job on it at the hospital, despite Brendan's tearing it up as bad as he did. The headgear is a pain in the ass; you can't hear well in it, not that you can ever hear much in the cage anyway. You can hear your coach – sometimes – but the rest is a dull roar. Yeah, he's ready.

Jose comes to join him; he'll be cornerman and Tommy's glad of Jose's presence. He can see a little bit into the darkened room because of the big lights over the cage. And there's Marco in his white Soul of a Lion tee, and the glitter of sequins on red beside him, but he can't see Kelly's face. Now he knows where she is, though, and he'll be able to look for her when he's in there.

His music starts, and he shakes his head. _Damn _Frank's stupid sense of humor: it's the Beastie Boys doing "Sabotage," absolutely cliché. And then the announcer gets rolling, announcing Casey "The Crusher" Finnegan, fighting out of Philadelphia, weighing in at 183.2 pounds, in red shorts, making his amateur debut.

That amateur status is crap; he fought in plenty of unofficial fights between Mexico and Pittsburgh after getting out of Iraq, but those were completely unsanctioned, barely legal. Probably some of them were downright illegal. Rings instead of cages, with ropes that could hurt like holy hell if you hit 'em wrong, and the floors were sticky with blood half the time, a medical nightmare, and he'd survived it all. Injured sometimes, sure, but never seriously.

He strips off the tee-shirt. Lets the fight official check his face and shoulders, his mouthpiece, and that he's wearing his cup, and then he's in the cage, bounding around to get a feel for the size of it and the amount of give under his feet, staying loose. He catches Kelly's eye, and she's nodding at him with her fist at her chest, as if to say he's in her heart, and he nods back. No smile. It's time to go to work.

And then the announcer is doing his thing for Jason Sobieski, over the sound of "Eye of the Tiger," from one of those really bad 80s Rocky sequels (_my God, that's even worse than __**my**__ music, _he thinks), fighting out of Dragon's Den Fight Club in Philly, weighing in at 184.8 pounds, in black shorts, with a record of six wins and three losses. The officials check him over and the crowd is screaming.

Now Sobieski's in the cage, and he looks pretty good, good muscle development and he moves well. Looks fast. Blond guy with no tats and his hair's all gelled up under the headgear, whaddya want to do that kind of thing for when in thirty seconds it's gonna be matted to your head with sweat anyway? The ref calls them in for instructions. They touch gloves, ref sends them back to their corners, then points to the center and they're going at it.

Blondie's dancing, got his hands up high as he tries to get a feel for Tommy. Tommy swings a right, just testing the guy's reflexes, and he ducks back and just as quickly swings at Tommy, but he's able to step back as well. Good. He throws a combination of hook-and-cross that connects with Blondie, while Blondie gets in a punch to Tommy's left shoulder, and they're engaged, most of the shots blocked by forearms.

Tommy presses in with aggression, jabs at Blondie's jaw and then throws his left knee at the midsection, fast, and when the guy shifts his weight, he does a quick combo punch-jab-punch, and Blondie's suddenly backed up to the cage and trying to fend off Tommy's fists. Blondie takes a couple of good shots and some glancing ones, and then twists out from under Tommy's left hook, out into the open.

Tommy spins and follows, back out to the center where Blondie's dancing. He's faster on his feet than Tommy, but Tommy hits harder. To set up the hustle, he comes in close and takes a wicked blow to the left side of his face as Blondie dances back, then throws a kick into Tommy's right thigh. Now that Blondie's landed a punch, he's getting cocky and Tommy pulls him into going too far. He jukes one way, lets the guy duck that, then steps up, throws his right knee and sweeps with the left foot, and Blondie's on the ground. Now he can grapple, _aw yeah_, and he's got Blondie's left arm pinned under his knee. He starts working the hold, hammerfisting the guy's ribs and right shoulder slow and heavy, and Blondie's suddenly galvanized enough to turn to his side under Tommy's weight. That's all right, he squeezes Blondie's ribs with his knees and goes for the kidney punch with his right because he's got a clear shot at it. Then he's raining blows on the shoulder and upper back, and Blondie's hurting but hanging in there, hanging in there – and then the airhorn signals the end of the first round.

Tommy rises slower than he's able to, wanting to keep his opponent down under his weight even a couple of seconds longer. Two reasons: one, he wants the guy on the floor as long as possible, and he can't stretch it much, but every little bit counts. And two, he's happy to let the guy think he's getting tired. He's not. He's fired up.

Jose hands him a water bottle and orders, "Sip." He presses the enswell to Tommy's cheekbone and holds it, and then moves it to the bone above his eye. The cold metal feels good, because he can already feel his face starting to swell. He doesn't think it's that bad, not bad enough to swell his eye shut during the fight, but it's going to puff. Jose moves back to the cheekbone and presses, and all the time he's talking. "Moving great tonight, man. Keep him guessing. You almost had him this round, you just ran out of time. That kidney's gonna be killin' him, and his shoulders. Keep hitting him there, you did some damage and lookit you, you still got plenty of gas for the next two."

Time. Jose gets out of the way and nods at Tommy, and they're back for the second round. _I want this over_, he tells himself. Blondie dances for a good twenty seconds, and then Tommy goes in with several kicks to the thighs – _that oughta slow him up some_ – and then goes for the takedown. Big left-hand shot to the right shoulder, the one he's been pounding on, and when the guy leans back he grabs the thigh with one hand and sweeps the other leg, and Blondie's landing hard on his back with Tommy on his chest like grim death. Two shots to the jaw later, Blondie's clearly out, and the ref's yelling, "Break break break break!" so Tommy can quit. Done. Over. He rolls off Blondie and hops up.

The medic's in the cage, checking Blondie out, but within a minute or two he's coming around. He'll have a nasty headache, Tommy knows, and they'll want to watch his kidney function, but Tommy held off on taking multiple kidney shots. Which are legal unless done with the heel, but this is ammy, not pro, and he didn't want to seriously hurt the guy. When Blondie – no, Jason Sobieski, now that the fight's over he can call the guy by his name – can get up, the ref makes the formal declaration and holds Tommy's arm up as the winner.

Sobieski looks pretty rough, but it just goes with the territory. He tells Sobieski, "Great fight, man," and they bump fists. It's not something that an angry Tommy Riordan would have done at Sparta, but Tommy feels okay doing it. It's respect. Then he does something else that Tommy Riordan would never have done: he lets himself grin and raises both arms up. God, that felt so _good_. Winning, it feels _so fucking good._

Yeah. It's crazy out there in the audience, people screaming and jumping up and down, and he can't see Kelly at all. Can't see Marco, either. He lets himself wonder just a tiny bit, while he's walking back out of the cage and to his dressing room, whether Kelly knows that it's almost a cliché for a fighter to get laid as soon as possible after the fight. He hadn't told her about that.

He towels the sweat off while he's stripping down, and Jose checks over his body for injuries: there's the bruise around his eye, that one hurts pretty bad but it's not serious. Some bruising to the forearms and shoulders, but again nothing serious. A red mark on his left outer thigh, from taking a kick, and that will bruise up soon. The thigh will take longer to swell and bruise up – it took a harder hit and the bruise will be deep – and it's probably going to hurt more than the arms over the next couple of days. Jose makes up some ice bags and tapes them on him since there's no ice bath here to sit in, probably the only piece of equipment they _haven't _had at this tournament. He gets dressed in clean boxers and some loose sweat pants, and leaves his shirt off until the ice bags can do their job and be taken off. Grabs a protein bar out of the cooler bag and eats that.

"You good?" Jose asks. "I've gotta go, Anita's been sick this week and I wanna go check on her."

"Thanks, man," Tommy tells him. "And thank Marco for coming, too."

Jose nods, gathers up his stuff, and leaves to go home and be with his wife.

_It would be good to have a wife_, he thinks to himself, adjusting the ice pack on his left shoulder. _Hurry up and get back here, Kelly._

O : O : O :

At about 7:25, while she's sitting in the dressing room watching Tommy sleep, Kelly gets a text from Tess: _Hey girl hope ur wkend was good! We just got on the road heading home, be back by 10:30 or so. Mike bringing the boys tomorrow, right?_

She debates what to say about the weekend, not wanting to get detailed about it over text message. It would be too weird to say something like "Wkend was awesome, yr BIL is wizard in the sack. BTW am totally in luv w him." No. Absolutely not. She imagines Tess reading that, and laughs to herself. Shakes her head. No. Absolutely not. Tess would probably be puzzled and read it out loud to Brendan, who would veer off the road in shock. Nope. Okay, a reasonable response would be about the boys. She texts back: _Yes, he said by 9. Let me know if you want his cell #. Glad you're coming home._

Tess texts back almost immediately: _Bren sez to tell you Tommy has a fight tonight. Can you go? We can't get home in time & he doesn't have anybody there._

Well, she can address that, at least. _Already there. In hall now, talking to Jose. And I forgot! __Pls tell Brendan happy fathers day for me, he's such a good dad._

Tess: _Good! TY. Tell Tommy I said to kick ss. B says thanks and he appreciates you. Nite, love_.

Kelly texts back that she will, and goodnight.

She has never seen one of these fights, of course. It's simply never interested her. Sure, she's been known to watch ESPN SportsCenter's hit highlights during football season, just to see players hit the ground. Knocking people wearing pads and a helmet to the ground, not a problem. But boxing, she hates that. Thinks it's stupid and wasteful and brutal, without any redeeming entertainment value.

So she is apprehensive about this fighting thing.

But Jose seems nice. Family man with soft eyes and a core of steel underneath, just like Daddy, and she wonders again why that seems to matter to her so much, that combination of iron fist and velvet glove, and then she thinks it's ironic that Machiavelli's description should pop into her head while she's waiting for guys to start using their fists. And Marco's a real cutie. He looks like a player, the kind of man she's never been attracted to, but he's got a great happy smile and doesn't seem so stuck on himself as you'd guess. He's obviously got a gentle side, too, and now she's wondering whether that's unusual, whether Frank Campana has somehow put together a gym full of tough guys with hearts of gold.

She sighs.

She feels a little conspicuously dressed, in here with three men wearing tee-shirts and athletic shorts, when she's got on a party top that's perhaps a little more risque than she'd remembered it being. There is a distinct portion of her cleavage on display. But she loves this blouse, despite it being right at the very edge of good taste: a satin tank-style top with a row of tiny silver sequins at the V neckline and another one at the empire waist. It's low in the back as well, and it's dressy enough to make her dark jeans look sharp instead of casual, and it looks great with her little red stacked-wood heel sandals, the ones with the red suede flowers on the thong.

Besides which, she'd seen Tommy's eyes flame up when he saw her in it, so she'll put up with getting ogled. These two, probably because they know she's with their friend, are being discreet about it. Every so often their gazes will fall to her chest, and then come right back up, and mostly they're talking to her face, not her boobs.

Around 7:40, Tommy's eyes pop open, instantly awake, and he's saying something about it being time for him to go to work. That means time for her to take off and let him prepare. She tries to look him over without being too obvious about it, tries to imprint his face on her brain the way it is now: nose straight, eyes clear, teeth all present, his beautiful mouth soft and full.

He tells her not to worry. She kisses him.

And then she's walking into the main part of the building with Marco, and he's telling her some story about his first amateur fight, how his opponent had done thus-and-so but he'd been able to get the guy on the mat and make him tap out. She doesn't really follow, but he's being so friendly, so she listens, and says _uh-huh_ and _wow_ when it seems appropriate.

The lights are still on, and they're selling bottled soft drinks and water in the back, as well as snacky things like pretzels and candy and Slim Jims, the same sort of thing you could get at the rec league baseball games. No alcohol, which relieves her mind a little bit. There are long tables set up in the back, farthest away from the cage area, with folding aluminum chairs set up, and there are several kids chasing each other around. She takes a good look at the cage from yards away: it's tall, it has eight sides, it has a wire mesh, it's on a platform. There is something really intimidating about it, like maybe the guys in it are wild animals, and if they escaped everybody else would be in danger. She doesn't like the idea.

"What's with the cage?" she asks Marco. "I mean, instead of a ring? The cage is sort of... scary. I don't know."

He explains that different organizations within the sport use one or the other, and there's some controversy as to which one is better. He likes the cage himself, but then he's more of a grappler than a striker, and he thinks the cage favors grapplers. He hates falling out of a raised ring; that's happened to him once or twice. He gives her a couple of other explanations that she doesn't get, being too unfamiliar to understand what he's talking about, and at some point she interrupts him to ask, "So is Tommy a grappler? I know he wrestled when he was a kid."

And Marco laughs. "He does _everything_. Grapple, strike, kick... the guy doesn't really have one fight style. He's all over the place. But listen – Frank doesn't want him recognized, so we can't yell 'Tommy!' at him, okay? Jose's been calling him 'Crusher' all evening."

"I can't call him Crusher," she says. "Just can't do it, I'll laugh. I'll say Finnegan or something." They go buy some water, and Kelly gets a pretzel.

They're playing music in the hall, but it's some rap/heavy metal mix she's not enjoying much. All the same, it's been forever since she's been out at night with cell phone and lipstick shoved in one jeans pocket and money and driver's license in the other, instead of carrying a purse, but it feels kind of good. She feels young, and there's an adrenaline rush in the gathering crowd.

Marco has his cell phone out, texting, and she figures that before things get crazy it might be a good time to check in with Mike. She calls him, but it goes to voice mail. Figures. She texts a message saying, "Happy Father's Day! Hope you're enjoying the game and the boys are doing okay. No need to call, I'm just saying hi."

She makes a little conversation with Marco, chatting about nothing much really, but when she asks if he'll keep her straight on what's going on in the fights, he grins big and tells her that Tommy already asked him to. She can feel her cheeks going pink. That man. So sweet.

They make their way up to the front, showing their passes to the security guy, who nods and points them to a spot on the floor up close. The lights dim, and the announcer starts getting the crowd pumped up, and even though this is completely silly, she has no idea what she's cheering for, there's something fun about yelling along with everybody else, especially since Marco's doing it. The loudspeaker starts blaring sports jams like "Y'all Ready for This" and "Cupid Shuffle" and she's yelling along with everybody else when a fiercely-muscled little guy in yellow shorts struts out accompanied by some Spanish-speaking rapper.

The second guy fighting in the featherweight class – Marco explains all the weight classes to her – is skinny and wiry-muscled as well, but he's black, and his music's some other rap thing, and when they finally face off inside the cage she's amazed, because it's something like the choreography in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which she loved. The kicks and punches (_strikes_, Marco corrects her, a punch is a type of hand strike), the spins and footwork, and finally the wrestling on the mat, all combine in a sort of dance. Neither fighter seems to be getting the upper hand.

The first round ends, and Marco explains what the cutmen in the corner are doing with those handled metal things, cooling and shrinking the blood vessels where the fighters have taken strikes. He explains the three five-minute round system for amateur bouts, and that she's quite right, he'd call this first round pretty even, with maybe one more point given to the black guy in the royal blue shorts.

The second round goes much the same, with the slight Latino guy taking down the other one early on but the wrestling getting interesting – neither fighter able to keep the other down. She's sort of appalled at the way they can hit each other in the face and it's apparently legal, but they're still pretty even. When the round ends, Marco leans over and asks who she thinks won that round.

"I don't know," she says. "Looked pretty close to me. Is this common? I mean, that it's close like this?"

He shrugs. "It happens sometimes. And I think you're right, but if I'm counting correctly, the dude in the yellow shorts came out ahead that time by a couple of points. Hard to say."

The third round goes similarly, with even punches – no, strikes – and changes of what she'd call the lead, but there at the end the guy in blue shorts is landing a whole lot of strikes on the shoulder of yellow-shorts guy, and when the airhorn goes off again she tells Marco she thinks the blue shorts fighter might be a little ahead. He agrees. "You'll get the hang of it," he tells her. "You're doing fine."

And when the judges announce the winner, it turns out she's right: Blue Shorts Guy gets his arm held up by the referee. She cheers with everybody else, and the two guys in the cage bump fists and say stuff to each other before leaving. It didn't look too heated, and that reassures her as well.

The main lights come back on while those two leave the cage and they get set up for the next fight, cleaning areas of the mat and allowing time for the crowd to hit the bathrooms. It's pretty full in here, Kelly notes. Who knew MMA was so popular? She didn't know. There's a group of people not far from her wearing orange tee-shirts that say Russo's Gym on the front, and "Steve's Girls" on the back, and all the girls in the group look really really fit. She wonders if they're fighters too. It's a mixed group in a lot of senses – both men and women, a couple of Hispanic-looking people, some Asians, a couple of African Americans, a couple of white people. The only blond in the bunch is a lean man with the word STEVE on the back of his Russo's Gym tee-shirt, and by the way the girls are talking to him, demonstrating strikes and stuff, he might be their coach.

_That's pretty cool_, she thinks. Not that she'd want to do it herself, but it's pretty cool that the women who want to, can.

The lights flash and then dim, and the tournament moves on with the second fight. The first guy to be announced is from Dragon's Den Fight Club, a guy in black shorts, and the other one is from Russo's Gym, wearing orange shorts. The Steve's Girls crowd goes crazy yelling for their guy, whose name is Pedro.

Pedro dances around for awhile, with the guy in black – Chuck Szekely, Marco says, he knows him – just letting him dance, swinging in his general direction every now and then. "Chuck's looking for a takedown," Marco tells her. "Watch 'im, he wants to get the guy on the mat." But finally Chuck makes an aggressive move and Pedro the orange-shorts sweeps his legs out from under him and is on top of him, twisting his body into some position that looks as convoluted as the pretzel she just ate. "Look, he's got an armbar."

She tries asking what that is, but Marco's riveted and doesn't seem to hear her. He's muttering to himself, "Yeah, that's it, pull it tighter. Tighter – aw, you gave some back there, man. That's it. Tighter!"

When the round ends she says, "So the orange shorts is ahead in the points, right?"

Marco nods. "Yeah, you're getting it." He pats her on the arm. "He'll be proud of you." She blushes, but it feels nice anyway, and she doesn't want to be an idiot when this means so much to Tommy.

The second round starts, and almost right away Pedro punches Chuck in the nose, and blood spatters all over the place. Kelly's used to blood, that doesn't bother her, but what's astounding is the way that Pedro keeps going, and not only keeps going, is suddenly motivated. He hits Black Shorts hard, grabs him around the waist and flips him onto his back, hits him in the face again, and Black Shorts stops moving.

The medical team comes into the cage while the ref sits Pedro back down in his corner, and after some time Chuck the Black Shorts is up, waving weakly with a plug of cotton coming from his nose. Pedro from Russo's Gym is declared the winner, and then there's another little break for concessions and cage cleaning. Kelly watches the Russo's Gym people in orange shirts celebrating.

The third bout is different from either the first or the second. This time, everything seems to go much, much faster. The guy in gray shorts, Somebody Ruiz from a gym on the south side of the city, Marco says, almost immediately takes down the dude in green shorts with the giant eagle tattooed on his back, and gets him into a headlock. "That was stupid. Green wasn't paying attention," Marco tells her. "Daydreaming gets you into a lot of trouble, and you have to be alert from the beginning because some guys come in really aggressive." He eyes Kelly sideways and says, "Tom– um, Finnegan can do that. Be aggressive right away, I mean."

_Only in a fight_, she thinks, remembering how awkward he can be in conversation, and then, _Well, maybe in bed too_. It's too dark for Marco to see her blush.

Twelve seconds later the guy in green is banging his hand frantically on the back of his opponent's shoulder, and it's all over. Gray-shorts Ruiz is the winner. Marco tells her she's now seen the three major ways bouts get won – by decision, by KO, by tapout. There's another break, and she's really nervous now.

When the lights go dark again, her stomach is coiled up with excitement and nerves, and then the Beastie Boys over the loudspeaker and the announcer says Casey the Crusher (so ridiculous), and has he ever looked so huge before? She's screaming her lungs out, and Marco waves as Tommy goes bounding around inside the cage, looking relaxed and businesslike and _really, really hot_.

She hadn't expected that rush of blood to the groin. Wow. She must be some kind of pervert or something – he's going to have a guy throwing strikes at him but her body doesn't seem to care. She's got a fist up to her chest, trying to calm her heart down because he just looks so damn good, and he catches her eye.

The other guy's announced, Jason somebody from Dragon's Den again, in black contrasting with Tommy's red, and the fight starts. Marco's talking to her, probably explaining stuff, but she can't focus. All she can see is Tommy, moving smoothly and without apparent effort, dancing like the guys in the first bout did in a complex choreography that tightens the tension in her abdomen. "Come on, baby," she whispers, clenching her fists and leaning in, watching his body move, watching him throw strikes and duck them, watching him spin and charge and kick. She gasps when he takes a brutal hit to the face, and then realizes that he's just suckered his opponent into charging him before Marco can even tell her not to worry, it's nothing. And then they're on the ground and he's pounding the guy methodically, which is a little worrisome but it's Tommy, and this is _what he does_, and the other guy signed up for it, as he'd told her the very first night she met him.

And then the round's over and he sits on a stool for a few seconds, getting that cold metal thing pressed to his rapidly swelling eye, and he still looks calm and purposeful. So she tries to relax for that minute too, rolls her head around on her shoulders to break her muscular tension. "He's doing great," Marco yells into her ear. "Hardly tired at all, look at him." She answers that she's _been_ looking at him, and then the second round starts.

Marco's yelling encouragement, and everybody else is yelling too, but Kelly can't, she's too transfixed by the raw power on display. Her legs are shaky and she can even see her own nipples through bra and satin top, and _what I wouldn't give for five minutes in private with him_, because her panties are slick, sliding wetly against her center, and all she can think of is how good he'd feel inside her, filling her up.

And then Black Shorts is on his back on the mat, getting hit twice, and before she can ask Marco what happened, Tommy's up on his feet, bounding around the cage again and looking so pleased with himself that she knows he's won. "KO!" Marco yells, "Toldja!" and she nods.

She feels a little dizzy. But it's such joy to see Tommy raise his arms and grin, completely unselfconscious, like a kid, and she pinches her arm against the fading of the room. _No. Not now_, she says to herself. Marco starts a cheer, "Crusher! Crusher! Crusher!" and she joins in along with at least half the room.

The lights come back on and Tommy bounds down the few steps and back toward the dressing room area. She wants to go back, right now. Would it even take five minutes? There's something ancient about the way she feels, like he's the warrior and she's the spoils of victory. _Take me take me take me_, she wants to say, but he's in the back and Marco's talking to her over the buzz of crowd noise. "Give him a few minutes," he says, "and then go on back. Jose's probably icing him up some, and then Jose has to leave. And since Jose's my ride, I've gotta go too."

"You could stay," she says. "I don't mind driving you home." She doesn't. Well, she might a little, because she wants her hands all over her man, but still. Marco can sit in the back. (_Hey. 'My man,' he might not mind that kind of introduction._)

"You sure?" he asks, surprised. She nods. Her knees are still shaky, and she wants to run all the way to Tommy right now but she might fall over, so she takes a deep breath. "Hey, I'm gonna text Frank and tell him how it went," Marco says. She just nods again. She'll wait until Jose comes in here and Marco tells him he's going to stay, and then she'll go back to where Tommy is. There's a mat in that room. She thinks there's a lock on the door. She hopes she can make use of both of them, and show Tommy just how glad she is that he's not hurt, and that he's hers.

The guy with the microphone announces the light heavyweight fighters, and she tells Marco she's going to go on back now, not missing his sly smile. Girls must do this all the time, she reasons. Maybe that's why there are so many girls dressed like strippers at the boxing matches she's flipped past on TV. She shoves through the crowd, close by the Russo's Gym people, who are still talking animatedly, and then when there's a huge crowd roar she turns to see what's going on in the cage.

It's a mistake. Later, she's able to acknowledge that, but she doesn't know at that moment just how much damage she's about to do to herself, while she's there thrumming with excitement and the anticipation of sex and the knowledge of how frighteningly dear Tommy's become to her, just a few short months she's known him but it would kill her if he got hurt...

In the cage, one of the fighters has got the other one on his back, and is raining punches on him: face, head, chest, stomach, viciously and methodically destroying the man underneath him.

_It's Mike. Mike is on top of her, trying to destroy her, and she's helpless. He's just broken her arm by twisting it up behind her, and it's agony, and every time she gets her right arm loose to try to twist out from under, he pins it again and hits her in the ribs, in the stomach, in the breasts. Cussing her out for cheating on him, and when she screams that she'd never do that, he pulls her hair. Leans down into her face and says, nastily, "You better not, bitch, you better **not**. I know how you like it. You like it too much, whore."_

"_No, Mike, no – the boys are in here!"_

_And he turns to where toddler Martin is dripping tears, where kindergartener Jack is sitting up and rubbing the back of his head, and he screams at them, "Get out! Get out! Get the fuck outta here!"_

_And then as the children run out, he's yanking her scrub pants and her panties off, and then he's in her, and she feels nothing. Nothing between her legs, it doesn't even hurt. Her arm hurts, and her breasts and ribs hurt, and her head where he ripped out hair, and most of all her heart hurts, because he'd never been like this before. "It's not supposed to be like this," she whispers, tears squeezing out of her eyes. She stops fighting. _

"_What, bitch?" Mike says, thrusting hard. She still can't feel it."Fuck around on **me**, willya?"_

"_I never did," she whispers. "I'm your wife."_

"_**Mine**," he says, and then his groan as he finishes, and more tears squeeze out for the way he used to be before the fire that killed Lucas and Jackson, so sweet and funny and a good dad, irritable sometimes but never scary. Someone who would never hurt her, her husband, her lover... that guy all gone now. Unrecognizable._

_Mike gets up and pulls his pants on, and goes toward the door. "I'm goin' out," he says, pointing at where she's lying on the floor broken from the inside out. "You better be here when I get back, you whore."_

_She wants to say she's got to go to work, but he's gone. She pulls her pants up one-handed and gets onto her knees, **damn that hurts**, and then she calls in sick. She goes over her body with her hands, feeling that her ribs aren't broken, and it makes her hiss with pain. She gets the boys into their pajamas and brushes their teeth, and tells them she can't read tonight, she feels bad. Then she goes and lies on the couch because she can't possibly sleep in their bed, she can't do it. She'll wait until she's recovered. She can wait to get out. _

And then she's cold, her hands are freezing, and the lights are on, what the hell?

She blinks twice, and she's looking into Tommy's worried face, with that guy... Jose? behind him, and Tommy's holding ice to her hands. "You feel that, it's ice – oh _thank Christ_."

She shakes her hands out of his grip and drops the ice. Ugh.

"Just breathe," he orders, firm and calm, and she does, and it helps. "You know where you are, baby?" he says softly, taking her hands again. She nods. She knows exactly, it's the union hall where he was fighting. She just can't get her voice to work; she feels enveloped in cotton.

And then she really looks at his face, sees the livid bruise coming up on his left orbital bone. She sucks in a breath and touches her hand to it, and he leans his cheek into her hand for the barest second. "It's okay. Really, it's just a bruise. Don't worry."

She can talk if she really wants to. "It looks awful." Her shoulders are warm, she notices, with a rough texture – oh yes, her denim jacket. And pressure on it, too. She turns her head a little and sees Tommy's other friend with his arm around her shoulders. Oh, yes, Marco.

God. All three of them must think she's nuts. She looks around a little. They're in the little hall leading back to the dressing rooms, not far from where she'd walked on her own before the past stalked up to her and knocked her on her ass. Flashback, of course.

Jose leans past Tommy's shoulder and hands her an open bottle of Pepsi. "You should drink some of that," he says. "You need the sugar."

She should be drinking something hot, but that's not going to be available here. She just nods and takes the bottle. It tastes good, anyway, and the cold shocks her further into her body. That's good. "Thanks," she says, and sees Tommy's shoulders relax a little. He takes her other hand and holds it. "I'm going to be okay," she says to him. "How long was I – somewhere else?"

His face contorts a little, and he shrugs. "Tournament's over."

"A long one, then," she says. _Huh. Been a while since I had a long one_. "I don't know when it started, but usually they're only a couple of minutes."

"Sometime in the fifth fight, I think," Marco says. "Brutal KO."

Tommy nods, looking sick. He puts his hand behind her head and pulls her forehead onto his shoulder. "Did you know that would happen?"

"Thought it might," she confesses, feeling rescued. "Didn't want to let you down."

"Fuck," he says very softly. "I should have listened when you were nervous about it. Idiot woman."

"Not your fault," she says. Now she feels like she's floating. Everything is fuzzy. Gah, she hates this, the afterward. She can't feel anything.

"You should have _made _me listen." He sounds mad.

"Don't let's argue." She's so tired. She closes her eyes and she might actually go to sleep for a minute or two, because when he helps her stand up, Jose and Marco are gone and most of the other people in the hall are, too.

"Come on, let's go home," he says, and leads her out to the car. "_Drink_ that," he says, settling her in the seat and buckling her seatbelt before handing her the Pepsi again. She drinks some, then her stomach rebels and she caps it. She drifts off to sleep again on the way home, only waking up when he's taking the exit onto Larriston Rd., about seven minutes from her house.

He parks the car on the street, and he's out before she can even get her door open, coming around to her side to make sure she's okay. She lets him take her hand and pull her out, because she is shaky and unsure on her feet, and he keeps hold of her hand while he grabs his duffel bag with the other and gets them into the house. She's so brain-missing that she doesn't even move while he locks the door and turns off the lights, doesn't move until he tows her upstairs, gentle but insistent.

"Alarm set for work tomorrow?" he asks her. She nods. "Be right back," he says, and goes into the bathroom. She can hear the shower running in there while she sits on the bed and takes off her shoes. She gets up, slowly, and slips into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and then goes back into the bedroom. She leaves the lamp on, takes off all her clothes and just drops them into the hamper. Goes over to her dresser and puts on a spritz of one of her favorite perfumes for sleep, a quiet thing that smells of old bookstores and chai tea, because she finds it comforting and she does not give a green goddamn whether anybody else thinks wearing perfume to sleep in is weird. She gets out an old thin cotton nightgown from the drawer and pulls it on over her head, and then pulls the covers back and lies down on the bed.

Her reflexes are sort of shot and she feels numb, the way she often does after a flashback. Her emotions have been in a muddle unusual even for her; she knows she does the roller coaster thing a lot, but right now she feels like somebody hit the Puree button on her blender, and she has this emotional soup: everything homogeneous and bland and squishy like baby food. She _has_ emotions right now, _tons _of them, but she can't identify them and they're all swirled together so that she can't even _feel_ her own feelings. It's horrible. It is maybe the worst part of the post-flashback, worse even than the fear during it, because it's so unnatural for her.

She hears the water stop in the bathroom, and then start again briefly at the sink, and then stop, and he comes in still dripping, wrapped in a towel. He looks at her, where she's lying on the bed with the covers down, and his shoulders relax a little. "You tired?"

She nods. He pulls the towel off and dries his hair, then the rest of him. _So beautiful_, she thinks, in spite of the bruises. Which, to be honest, don't seem to be bothering him much. He goes and hangs the towel up in the bathroom, and then comes back. Glances at his bag on the floor, like he's wondering whether to put clothes on or not, and she forestalls that. "Come here," she says, and pats the bed next to her.

His shoulders relax a little more, and he lies down next to her. Reaches over to turn off the light. She pulls up the sheet and the thin bedspread, and they lie there in the cool of the window AC unit, and then she puts her head on his shoulder and feels him sigh.

"You tired too?" she asks.

"Yeah." His voice has gone gravelly.

"We should have put some ice on your face." It's going to hurt tomorrow. It probably hurts now. She reaches up and touches the contusion over his orbital bone, then the one on the cheekbone below, and cringes inwardly at the thought of how much worse he could have been hurt, how horrible it would be to see his fine nose broken or his lip split. And he faces that every time he fights. She has no idea how he does that – how he accepts the risk, the _likelihood,_ that he's going to suffer physical pain.

"It's okay, I had some ice on it earlier. Took some Advil for the swelling." He settles a little more comfortably against the pillow. "Kelly," he says. Exhales through his nose. "I didn't realize." He sounds sort of sick, and it takes her just a second to realize why: it's guilt. She knows the sound of guilt in his voice, it was all over him the evening he told her about Tony Faw and the bombing. She should have known how it would affect him.

"I know. But I wasn't prepared for how I was going to feel, either." Lying here in her own bed next to his warmth, she is beginning to feel safe again. She moves her hand from his cheek to his hair, kisses his neck, hears him catch his breath. And he begins to kiss her – her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, the top of her head, all down the side of her face and back to her forehead and down the other, and it is less kissing than it is the gentle sliding pressure of his exquisitely soft lips against her face, with that tenderness that he keeps so hidden from the outside world, and her body goes instantly liquid below the waist. Again. In the middle of all the emotional soup this one thing is solid and real, the way her body responds to him, and she takes hold of it and feels stronger.

She doesn't know why she isn't gun-shy when it comes to sex. She should be. She isn't, especially not with Tommy, especially not the way he seems realest when he's kissing her.

She runs her hand from his shoulder down his back to his hip, and pulls, urging him to rest his weight on her. He resists her, but only for a moment while he tugs at her nightgown, urging it up her body and off, and he sighs as he rolls on top of her, and kisses her mouth. It's so sweet, this kiss, but what she wants most now is to be _taken_ – firmly, passionately, so she doesn't have to think, doesn't have mental space to think about how much emotional work it will be to be with him. She presses her tongue into his mouth, reaches down to where she can feel him hard against her thigh, and guides him inside her. No preliminaries. She doesn't need them this time. Her earlier arousal is still there, that dampness between her thighs, and as he pushes all the way in, deep enough to bump up against her cervix, an indescribable noise escapes him. He breaks the kiss, tucks his face into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, and lies still.

He feels _so good _filling her up, so deep and thick inside her, and she still desperately needs more, but she holds his head to her, saying_ I love you_ without words as she caresses his hair. His lips move on her neck, saying something she can't understand, unless it's _I love you too_, and he pulls in a breath so ragged that it breaks her heart. "Tommy," she whispers. "Tommy, please."

He raises his head and kisses her, pulling her tongue into his mouth and sucking gently at it, and she can feel a rush of her own moisture where they are joined. He presses her arms to the bed, reaches for her hands and holds them, and then he starts to move. It's a long, long, long, slow, sensual grind that feeds her need, gradually winding the tension tighter and tighter. He never lets go of her hands, never stops the deep tongue kisses, never moves his upper body away from hers to pound her hips into the bed; he just lets the friction build and build until she's crazy with frustration, so closesoclose, "Please, baby," she whispers, frantic, breaking that neverending kiss and rolling her head on the pillow crazy, "_please_, faster."

"No," he whispers back, breathless, "No, just hang on." So she hangs on, gripping his hands tight, because what else can she do, he's so damn _big _and he feels so damn_ good_, all that power between her legs, and she can't take anymore of this long slow fuck, except that she does take it and take it, _so_close, _just_alittlemore, _please_, and suddenly she's catapulted over the edge and her climax is so strong she can feel her uterus contracting along with everything else and she nearly screams with the hard shock of it.

It feels like a long time before she comes down from it, but he never alters the rhythm, keeps it grinding slow, and now she can feel the tension in his arms that tells her he's fighting off his own release. She can't move much against his weight, but she winds her legs around his calves, then moves them up to his thighs. It changes the angle, and now she can feel the clench and release of his buttocks under her thighs, and it makes her crazy again, crying out, and he's kissing her neck, sucking gently there, and she's never enjoyed hickeys but just now the pressure of his mouth hurts _so_ good she can't stand it. She writhes under him until the pleasure sweeps her off again, not so forcefully this time but satisfying. And finally he lets her hands go and slides his arms under her body, holding her hips closer to him and moving harder, still at the same pace but really slamming into her now, and he groans like he's dying. Puts his face back into the crook of her neck and groans again, and then he's pressed so deep inside her that she does feel the force of that jet of heat this time.

He stays there, gasping like he's just finished a marathon, and she feels wetness on her neck, his mouth open and trembling against her shoulder and his back heaving under her hands, so she knows he's crying. "I love you," she says out loud, and clutches him tight to her. "I love you, it's okay. Tommy, it will all be okay."

He whispers something so quietly she can barely hear it, can't understand it.

It's only on the verge of sleep, held securely in his arms, that it comes clear to her: he'd said _can't be. _

**A/N: It just now came to my attention that the character I've been calling "Marco" is actually called "Marcos" in the movie credits, but I'm going to leave it without an S for the sake of continuity, and also because I just like it better. #itsmystory #andicanscrewitupifiwantto**

**Please be kind when commenting on my fight scenes – again, I don't know what I'm doing, other than my one-buttocked description of what I'm seeing in MMA videos on YouTube. Likewise with the flashback. I came across some research indicating that some people are susceptible to them in periods of high positive emotion as well as during times of anxiety. **

"**Every Time I Roll the Dice" was originally a Gary "US" Bonds song, but I like Delbert's version.**


	31. Chapter 31: Under the Skin

**Chapter 31: Under the Skin**

Sunday night, Tommy wakes up starving at just before 2 am. He'd never managed to eat anything but that protein bar after the match. He slides out of bed, finds his duffel bag in the dark, and fishes out a pair of clean shorts to put on. He goes downstairs, walking on the edges of the risers so they don't squeak and wake Kelly up. There was some of that pasta salad with chicken left from lunch yesterday; he saw her put it in the fridge.

While he's eating, he thinks about how Jose had burst back through the dressing room door, telling him that something seemed to be wrong with Kelly. He keeps shoving out of his mind the way she'd looked then, eyes wide and horrified. Her mouth had been moving, but she hadn't made any sound, and neither shaking her nor physically moving her had penetrated the flashback. Finally – remembering how she'd put Emily's blanket on his shoulders that time in the treehouse – he'd had the idea to put ice on her hands, to try to bring her back to the present with her own senses, and it had worked.

If only he'd _listened_ to her.

Her paleness, her anxious eyes, all those little things that said how nervous she was, he'd ignored them all. Seen them and dismissed them with, _Aw, she'll be fine_. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. He'd been selfish. He'd wanted her to see him fight instead of letting her sit in the back safely away from the blood and the violence. And because of him, she'd spent twenty minutes in fear and pain and hell. No, she hadn't had to tell him what her flashbacks were like; he knew, more or less. He'd lived with Pop.

Why, _why_ had he survived the bombing? He was no better a person than any of his guys – no, not even that borderline-sociopath Lewis – and a hell of a lot worse person than a lot of them. _God, Manny. Manny, it should've been you, man. Should've been you going home, not me._

He finishes eating and just sits there at the table for awhile, trying to imagine a life where he comes home to this house and has dinner with Kelly and Jack and Martin, and watches TV with them, makes sure Martin brushes his teeth, tucks Jack in, goes to bed with Kelly... he can see himself doing all of that, and it sets up this ache in his chest, the same sort of I-want-that ache he'd sometimes got hanging out at Manny's, the same one he gets watching the closed circuit of Brendan and Tess and the girls.

But if he lived here, he would need to contribute to the household instead of being a huge money suck, which he is right now, and which is in any case a constant irritation at the back of his mind. He hates depending on Brendan. _Hates_ it. Hates that he can't pay his own way. And Kelly, the sweetheart, hasn't said anything to him to make him feel that he's dead weight in terms of finances, but by his own terms he is. And he can't, he just can't do that to her.

He should get a job. But what kind of job? He doesn't know, and it isn't because he hasn't been racking his brains over it ever since he got that damn DD. He could probably be a cop, or a firefighter, or maybe an EMT. He's got the physical skills for the first two, and he's done enough nursing, seen enough injuries, that pretty much nothing grosses him out now. _But_, and it's a big problem, most cities won't hire anybody dishonorably discharged from the military, no matter the cause. So those are out. Be a mechanic? Maybe. Some kind of trade thing, if he could find a job and then maybe get licensed.

But some of those trade licenses mean going to college, and he just doesn't think he's up to it. Maybe one day in the past he could have, but now? Sit in a classroom all day? Read? Nah. He doesn't have the brain power for that. No, the job would have to be something easy to get. He'd ask Frank for a job, except that he knows Frank doesn't need anybody else he'd have to pay.

He should probably give up on this stupid dream now. _Being the best_, it used to be all that mattered to him, and maybe it was all he had let himself care about because it was manageable, it was just a little outside his grasp, and if he could just focus enough, train enough, pull the performance out when he needed it, he could do it. He could make Pop proud, make everyone like him, make life better.

It's a kid's dream. Kids don't understand what he knows now, that winning a wrestling championship means abso-fucking-lutely nothing when your mother's coughing up blood. That it means nothing when you can't trust anybody that you should be able to trust.

And right now, he has to move, get up, walk around, _something_, just to keep from thinking that his life is such a waste, that he's done nothing real with it. Fuck it. He rinses off his plate and glass and puts them in the dishwasher.

The hell with this, he's not going to be able to sleep. He'll go run for awhile, until the confusion goes away. It always does, when he runs. He focuses on his breathing, and how many steps until the next block, and how much farther he can go, and eventually all the doubt and the guilt go away for long enough that he can sleep.

He's about to go upstairs when he realizes that the laundry basket in the living room has some of his clothes in it, like tees and shorts and socks, the last load they'd had time to fold but not time to put away. So he throws on a tee-shirt and socks, and grabs his running shoes from by the door, and he's out on the street with her house key, running the demons away, same as last night. It's 2:43am when he leaves, and he figures he'll be back in plenty of time to grab a few hours of sleep before starting the day.

And, fuck it, they hadn't talked about Monday at all. At all. It ties his hands with regard to Brendan and Tess, he can't say anything to them until he knows Kelly's ready to make things public. Bad enough that Marco and Jose know. Though she'd seemed okay about meeting them, to be fair.

It takes a long time for the demons to settle. He has no idea how far he's run when his body starts saying, _Enough, dumbass, your thigh hurts and it's getting hard to breathe_. He has no clue how many times he's done the loop.

But when he gets back to Kelly's, the sky has a look that says dawn's not far off, and when he lets himself in and checks the little antique clock in the living room, it's 4:37. He's run for almost _two hours_, and that's probably not good. Frank's probably going to frown again and tell him to take it easy today.

Unless he lies about the run. He might have to. Because he knows he can't get through the day without keeping busy.

He locks the front door behind him again, takes his stack of neatly folded clean clothes upstairs, and ducks into the bathroom for another shower. And now his bruises are really starting to show, livid red-purple against his skin, and that thigh bruise is gonna hurt like a bitch. He gets out and dries off and goes quietly into Kelly's room.

Thank God, she's still sleeping. He slides into the bed and puts his arm over her, pulls her close. Kisses her forehead. She stirs only enough to make a questioning _hmm_ sound, and he whispers, "It's okay." His chest aches so badly right now, thinking about how bad he has fucked this up, and how much it hurts him that he's caused her pain. He kisses her forehead again, breathes her in, strokes her hair. Whispers, "I love you," to her, the way he should have last night, but he couldn't get any sound out then because he'd been so overwhelmed, and trying so hard not to let her know how little control he had over his emotions.

How are they going to do this? How _can_ they? He can't see a way. He can't see why she even wants to try.

At 5:30 he kisses her mouth very softly and gets out of the bed. Gets dressed again, grabs his duffel and any loose clothes, and then he leaves. He stands on the porch and presses his hand to that achy spot in the center of his chest, then slings the duffel across his shoulder, hops on the bike and goes. It's awkward cycling with the duffel, so he zigzags over to Brendan's and drops the duffel up against the garage door where hopefully no one will bother it, not in this nice neighborhood. Then he goes for a long ride, reasoning that he's already run, and his thigh's sore, and the bike's easier on it.

When he comes back it's because he's exhausted and his legs feel like wet tissue paper. Nobody else is up at ten to seven. He showers, then collapses onto the bed, but not before turning off his cell phone. He doesn't hear Tess in the kitchen, or the girls eating pancakes; he doesn't even hear Brendan knock softly at the door. And he certainly doesn't hear Brendan say _sotto voce_ to Tess, "Tommy finally got in. Asleep now, dead to the world. Wonder where he spent the night?"

Tommy sleeps through the arrival of Jack and Martin; he misses meeting Mike Porter (which is, all things considered, a mercy for both of them). It's only when Brendan comes into his room at close to ten am that he wakes up, having gotten less than four hours of sleep this morning.

"Hey," Brendan says, sitting on the bed and pulling the pillow away. "Hey, get up, man."

"The _fuck?_" Tommy manages to say, jittery and disoriented by lack of sleep. "Patrol, now?" Then he sits bolt upright and recognizes his brother. "Shit. Seriously, you might want to be careful waking me up."

"Sorry," Brendan says. "Frank just called me. Says you're not answering your phone."

"_No,_ I'm not answering my phone," Tommy says. "I'm_ fucking sleeping_. Leave me alone."

"Grouchy bastard," Brendan says, managing to make that sound sort of affectionate. "Hey, you need to get up and go to the gym. Frank will come over here with a crowbar and pry you out of bed if you don't."

Tommy makes a face, which is a mistake because it hurts his cheek.

"You look like shit," Brendan observes with concern in his voice. "I mean, I know you fought last night – heard you won, by the way, congrats, not that you called _me _to tell me about it – and I've seen you pretty bruised up before, but it's underneath that. Your skin looks weird. Sort of, I dunno, almost yellow." He cocks his head and looks at Tommy as Tommy drags himself out of bed and throws on shorts over his boxers. "Nasty one on your thigh there."

"Yep. Dude had a wicked kick. Bet he looks worse than me today, though."

"Where were you last night?" Brendan asks casually, although it's perfectly clear that this question has been driving him crazy for the last twelve hours. "Hot date?"

"That is none of your business, man," Tommy says, feeling fully as shitty as Brendan says he looks.

"You stay with a girl?"

This is beyond annoying, Brendan hassling him about something he can't just explain. "Fuck. Off." He says it through his teeth while he's putting clean socks on.

"Well, _excuse _me," Brendan says. "Just curious. You don't have to tell me."

"I'm not gonna." He throws on a shirt. He's achy as hell and thirsty and everything hurts, and he can't remember feeling like this before, not even after Sparta with his torn shoulder and all the bruises from that. This is different.

Brendan gets up. "I gotta go in a few minutes. There's some breakfast for you in the fridge, okay?"

"Yeah, thanks."

"Thank Tess. She's going to take the kids to the pool, I think. You know, I've had the worst time keeping Emily out of here because she was all worried about you. She wants to make sure you're okay."

"Oh yeah?" Emily's sweet.

"Yeah. If you can reassure her a little before you go that would be great."

Tommy just nods, and Brendan stops at the door. "You really don't feel good, do you? Do you think you're sick?" He shrugs. Maybe. It would explain why he feels like he's been run over with a tank. And Brendan comes back and slings an arm around his neck. "I wish I coulda been there. Make sure I get to come to the next one, okay?"

"Yeah." He loops an arm around Bren's waist and they hug, just briefly.

"Take it easy today," Brendan says.

"If Frank says so," Tommy says, and follows him out into the kitchen. Brendan leaves, and Tommy heats up the omelet Tess has left him, and finds the grapes in the bowl on the counter. He picks at the omelet, which tastes like iron filings. It feels like so much_ work_ to eat, right now. He makes himself eat it anyway, figuring that he needs the fuel. He gets out his cell phone and sends a message to Frank that he'll be there in an hour, ignoring the text messages from Frank and Kelly for now.

And then the kids come running through in swimsuits, Rosie and Emily and Martin and Jack, and it's all _Uncle Tommy!_ And _What happened to your face?_ And _Did you win? Are you okay?_ _Did you get hurted?_, and they're all hugging on him, and Martin bumps up against something on his back that hurts. He doesn't remember taking a shot to the liver, but maybe he's got a superficial bruise there. Weird.

He tells them he's okay, he won, he's got bruises but he's not really hurt, and have a good time at the pool. Tess comes in to grab her purse and hug him, and he lets her do it while he thanks her for breakfast. Tess tells the kids to go jump in the van, and then she asks Tommy quietly if Kelly's okay. For one terrible moment he thinks, _Shit, she's gonna kill me for screwing Kelly's life up again_, and then he figures Tess needs to know, because Kelly needs looking after. So he tells her that Kelly had a flashback, a bad one, and that he stayed over at her house to make sure she was okay. It's technically true, but it feels like a lie and he hates it, but on the other hand why make a big deal about what's going on between them when they don't even know how to describe it?

Tess says, "I wondered. She never texted me back last night. I know she gets sort of irrational about this kind of thing sometimes. I wonder if she ought to be on meds."

He shrugs. Tess touches his cheek and says, "Take it easy." He smiles as best he can, and then heads out to the gym.

Where Frank takes one look at him and says, "Whoa. Come here under the light," before scrutinizing Tommy head to toe. "Brendan's right, you've got a weird tinge to your skin. How much rest did you get last night?"

He shrugs. Adds it up. "Maybe four hours. Five? I'm not sure."

"Why?"

"Stuff on my mind."

"A little recreational drug use?" Frank asks. He levels a hard eye at Tommy. "And don't lie to me about it. If you did, you did, and we have to work around that. I don't like it, I don't condone it. You _keep_ doing it and you're outta here. But tell me the truth."

This is almost as bad as Pop taking his pills, way back when he first started training with him. Fairly humiliating. "No. And I'll piss in the cup to prove it if you want."

Frank's eyebrows go up. "Seriously, you look awful. Anybody slip something into your drink, that you know of?"

"_No_." He's adamant. Because hell, yeah, he could have gone for a Percocet last night, but hedidn't, damn it.

"Okay," Frank says. "I'm sorry. I just don't know what's going on with you, but there's something. Maybe I ought to have the lab test your CK levels again. Did you take it easy over the weekend like I said?"

"Yes." But there must be something evasive in his voice, because Frank catches his eye again and props his fists on his hips. Frank'll find out anyway, he's persistent as hell. "I ran some. That's all, I swear."

"Okay." Frank shakes his head. "I want you leaving the heavy bag alone today, and no more running. You can do a little light workout, then rest, and then maybe some sparring with me."

"Where's Jose?"

"Anita's sick. He's home with the kids today."

So he does some footwork drills, and he works the speed bag awhile (which is great, he can get into a rhythm with that and not think). Then when Frank tells him to knock off for a couple of hours, he lies down on one of the mats and goes to sleep. When he wakes up, he goes to pee and it's dark again. Maybe there is something really wrong. He grabs some water and goes into Frank's office. He's missed lunch but he doesn't feel like eating, he just wants to sleep.

"Man, I feel like shit. I think I'm coming down with something."

Frank looks up from where he's on the phone. "Okay. Just go home and rest, Tommy. I really do not like the way you look lately, and I'm trying to get hold of the doctor's office so they can tell me how your test was on Friday. In the meantime, just get some sleep and don't forget to stay hydrated, okay?"

He nods. Bikes back to Brendan's. The kids are downstairs watching a movie while it's hot outside, and Tess is cleaning upstairs. He should have done that for her, crap. He eats a piece of toast and drinks some more water, and then he can barely hold his eyes open so he goes back to bed.

His piss is still the same nasty dark orange when he wakes up near ten pm, and he still feels like moldy dogshit, but he drags himself into the kitchen, where Tess and Brendan are eating strawberry ice cream and talking. "You look awful," Tess says, concerned. "And you slept all afternoon. I think you should go to the doctor."

He nods. "Probably tomorrow. Frank said the same thing." He drinks some milk and eats another piece of toast. He should be eating more, but his stomach seems to have shut down. Everything tastes like iron.

"Kelly was worried about you when she picked up the boys today. Said you weren't answering your phone," Tess says. "I told her you thought you were sick."

"Oh. I had it turned off. I'll go check it in a minute."

Brendan's not saying anything, he's just looking Tommy over with an expression on his face that reminds Tommy of Mom. Any minute now he'll put his hand on Tommy's forehead to check his temperature. "Yeah, I think you should go to the doctor tomorrow. I have never seen anybody look so terrible without being on the verge of death."

"_Great_. Thank you. I feel so much better since you said that," Tommy says. "You're such a comfort."

"Maybe you should go to the emergency room," Brendan says, ignoring the sarcasm.

"I'm still walking around," Tommy reminds him. He's felt worse, actually, like when he had mono in high school. But not much worse. "We'll see what Frank says tomorrow." He drinks a big cup full of water and adds, "I'm going back to bed now."

"Do you want me to come check on you later?" Brendan asks him, and he just gives his brother a withering look without answering, and goes into his room.

"Wow," he hears Tess say from behind his closed door. "You're right, that _is_ grouchy. And he looks really bad. Which would explain the grouch, I guess."

"I don't like it," Brendan says. "I don't care what he says, I'm checking on him later."

He picks up his cell phone and turns it on, and then he can hear Tess say, "Kelly? Honey, how are you? Tommy told me you had a rough time last night..." so he can't call Kelly right now. He brushes his teeth and collapses back onto the bed, and the next thing he knows it's nearly midnight and his phone is buzzing with a text. No, several. Some from Frank, from this morning, and one from Kelly this morning telling him she missed waking up with him (damn) and she hopes he has a good day. Then two recent ones, time-stamped at 11:45 and 11:46:

Kelly: _ARE YOU DEAD? Srsly freaking here. Tess says you are really sick. CALL ME. Unless you are asleep, and then you get a pass._

Kelly: _Oh. And I love you. I miss you. I wish you were here._

This is _killing_ him. He wants to talk to her, and he doesn't. It's such a huge mess. But he's hitting the SEND button on his phone already, and she's answering and it's her voice warm in his ear and for some reason he feels better even though he knows it has no medical value whatsoever.

"My _God_, have I been worried about you," she says. "You didn't answer your phone all day, and Tess says you look terrible."

"It's all BS. I look great, Vogue just called me for a photo shoot."

She laughs a little. "Really, how are you?"

"Feel like crap. Frank will probably make me go to the doctor tomorrow." He reassures her that it doesn't seem to be anything from the fight, at least not that he knows of. She asks about symptoms, but he puts her off and asks how she is.

"I was fine this morning. It usually takes me a while to recover from one of those long flashbacks, but a night's sleep goes a long way. I haven't had one of those in... months, I guess. Just the little ones that last a few seconds." She's quiet a minute. "I'm really sorry about it. It kind of put a damper on the evening, and I was having a good time up until then."

He is suddenly angry, so angry his hands start to shake. "Don't you ever, I mean _ever_, apologize to me for something like that. Especially when it was my fault in the first place."

"It wasn't your fault," she insists.

But he knows. If she hadn't been at the fight it wouldn't have happened. And what does he do for a living? Well, not for a living. As preparation for the big tournament. He's quiet. He uses that technique Frank taught him to try to slow his pulse down and relax.

Finally, she says, "So you told Tess you were here last night."

"Yeah. I told her what happened and that I stayed to make sure you were okay." He gets a flash of what it had felt like, making love to her after, his heart in knots, and has to close his eyes. _Oh, Kelly. _"Didn't tell her about... you know, us."

"I almost told her today," Kelly says, and her voice is so sweet. "I just... I wanted to make sure you were okay with it. I mean, officially." His throat closes up. _Tess is going to kick my ass for being insensitive, and then Brendan will do it for being stupid._ "Tommy? _Are_ you okay with this?" She sounds uncertain now, and he hates that he's doing this to her.

"I'm... I'm not sure. I mean, how can we even do this? I just don't know how we're gonna do this."

"I don't know either," she says. "I just know I don't want to let it go. I know how I feel about you." _ What you don't know is how stupid that is,_ he thinks, _how doomed that would make you._ _The Conlon women, they're all doomed._

Well, not Tess. But then, Brendan doesn't fit the pattern of the Conlon men, either, despite the surname tattoo on his bicep.

And he isn't Brendan. Never has been. Doesn't get how to be him. Will never get it.

_Fuck_.

"You are quiet," she says, and now she sounds worried.

He sighs. "I really feel like shit."

"If I hang up, will you go to sleep?"

"Yeah."

"Will you call me tomorrow?"

No. Maybe. "Yeah."

"Okay," she says, "get some rest, John Wayne."

"I love you," he can't help saying to her, and she says it back, and then he hangs up. He goes to pee – _God, it looks like rust, that's pretty scary_ – drinks some more water, and goes back to bed.


	32. Chapter 32: And Even Deeper

**Chapter 32: And Even Deeper**

_More researchy stuff here, because I don't want to put it at the end of the chapter: the medical situation Tommy's in did actually happen to MMA heavyweight Junior dos Santos in May of this year; he almost died. I'm fudging with the numbers, though, and regardless of the fact that sports doctors don't make gym calls unless they're very close friends with the gym owners, I wasn't able to find out how long it takes to test a blood sample, or whether hemodialysis is required for any patient with this diagnosis. I'm not trained medical personnel, and neither one of my nurse friends was available for detail verification this week._

_Also, I'm going to be out of town most of the rest of this week, and I may or may not have the opportunity to update before the middle of next week. All the same, I'd appreciate reviews or comments. I heart you all._

Tommy feels like complete _shit _Tuesday morning. His dreams had been full of Mom and the little Iraqi girl, and Brendan ripping his shoulder in half, all kinds of pain and hell. Out of pure habit, he just sort of automatically gets up at 5:30 and goes to run six miles, his usual loop around the streets near Brendan's house. It usually takes less than forty minutes, but it takes him fifty today. His legs don't feel right, and he almost trips once because he has this sudden weakness in his right calf, just as he lands on it. It's worrying him.

Frank calls him into his office the minute he walks in the gym door, and even though he's already late because he's so exhausted and achy this morning, he tries to prepare himself for listening with good grace. Frank deserves that much. "Hey," Frank says, looking wary, "look, I just got back this report from Dr. Fowler, and I gotta talk to you."

"I'm clean," Tommy says. "I told you I was."

"No, no, nothing like that. It's your CK levels, they're off the charts."

"My _what _now?"

"CK levels. Creatine kinase? It's an enzyme produced by heart muscle, skeletal muscles, and the brain. People with high muscle mass have more of it. Average adult male has a CK level under 300; elite athletes can test at 350 under normal conditions. Pushing your body too hard and exercising too rigorously can shoot it higher. You been a beast in here lately, you never quit. You wanna guess what your CK level is?"

Tommy shrugs. So maybe he's been working out a lot recently. He has a lot on his mind.

"That blood sample we took on Friday tested out at_ 620. _ Tommy, you _have _to slow down and rest. You're going to wind up with exercise-induced rhabdomyolysis. Your liver can't take the pressure."

"Quit speaking Chinese, Frank, and just tell me what it does. I can't understand all this science shit."

"Okay, you want it straight?" Frank sits up behind the desk and stabs a finger toward him. "With rhabdomyolysis, your body is actually consuming its own muscle fibers. Your muscles are breaking down. And the problem with that, when you have plenty of muscle to burn – like you do – is that your liver cannot handle it. It can't process the waste products. Tommy, this is serious business. Junior dos Santos almost _died_ from overtraining earlier this year. I'm not making that up. His CK levels were something like 1400, and we _have_ to slow you down some or you are going to wind up in the hospital on a dialysis machine. Or worse. I know you, you don't quit on your own, but I'm going to have to make you take it easy for awhile."

Huh. Pop always said you _couldn't _overtrain.

"How are you feeling?" Frank asks. Demands, really. "Any aches, muscle weakness, tiredness? I know you said you weren't feeling good yesterday."

Well, shit. He starts to answer, intending to play down his tiredness and that weird unreliability in his calf during his run... and the soreness in his back... but this is Frank. He'll ferret it out sooner or later, and to be honest the rust-colored pee is starting to skeeve Tommy out. Maybe it's related. "Yeah."

"Yeah what?"

"All of it. Achy, tired. And my calf felt shaky today when I went running."

"_You went running?_" Frank incredulous and annoyed is nowhere near the scare factor of, say, Sergeant Major Hopkins in a snit, but it's still impressive.

"This morning," Tommy says defensively. "I always run. You didn't say not to run today."

"_Holy Mother_ – And you _fought _on Sunday. Jesus." Frank shakes his head. "Is that it? You telling me everything?"

"Well. I feel like shit. And my back hurts."

"And you went running anyway." Frank just looks at him for a minute before speaking, and it starts to become clear to Tommy that he is really, seriously, pissed off. "You are gonna drink a bottle of water, drill a little with me this morning, drink another bottle of water, and then you _go home and rest_. Or if you won't do that at home on your own, you're gonna stay under my big glary eyeballs and drink your water and _rest_. If you won't do that, I will call your brother and we'll take you to the hospital, where you will drink your water and rest, hooked up to _machines_. You don't move so much as your _pinky_ without my say-so, do you get me?"

"Jesus, don't get your panties in a wad, Frank."

"How's your pee?" _Is there a spy hole in the bathroom at the gym? _ Frank rephrases the question, getting snittier. "When you took a piss this morning, what color was it?"

"Um..."

"The hell with this. Go check. If it's brown, you're going straight to the ER, do not pass GO, do not collect $200, do not _tick me off_. Frank digs in his desk and comes up with a specimen cup. "Go pee in that."

So Tommy pees in the specimen cup, and almost drops the damn thing because rust-colored piss is so freaky. He puts the lid on and stands there holding it, not wanting to go show Frank and listen to him bitch. But what else can he do? He walks back into Frank's office and hands Frank the (disgustingly warm) cup.

Frank takes it, looks at it, and puts it in a filing cabinet drawer. Shakes his head. "Wow. Houston, we have a problem."

Tommy takes a deep breath. "What do we do, Coach?"

"'_Coach_'? Did you just suddenly decide that Frank knows what he's talkin' about?"

"Guess so."

"Well, I do. And now you know. You wanna go back home and rest, or are you gonna stay here and rest? Those are your choices." He opens the office fridge and tosses two water bottles to Tommy. "Drink one of those right now. Your liver needs all the help it can get."

Tommy opens one up and pounds down about half of it. He _is_ thirsty today.

"And no sparring today. You do _nothing _else today."

_Fuck. No._ "Frank, I can't do nothing. I'm gonna go crazy."

Frank looks at him shrewdly. "Yeah? Why?"

_Kelly_. Without even meaning to think of her, he's suddenly got her there in his head, and he has to close his eyes just for half a second and control the shiver. "I got a lot on my mind," he tells Frank.

Frank's still looking at him, and then he says, "Okay, then, you are gonna sit here in the gym and – I don't know, read. Listen to music. Put your feet up. Drink a lot of water. Wait for Dr. Fowler to show up and do another blood test. Eat some carbs. Take a nap."

"I'll go nuts, I swear."

"No, you won't. Or if you do, we'll just sit on you or something." Frank isn't taking the go-crazy idea as lightly as his words would suggest. His eyes are serious. "I'll call Brendan. Or your dad, if you want. Or are you finally going to take my advice and go see a counselor?"

"Counselors are full of shit."

"Sometimes. But sometimes not," Frank says calmly. "No? All right then. Go lie down on a mat or something. You sneak out, I will _can your ass._ That means no Sparta. I will _get you blackballed_. You could die. You do not dick around with this stuff. You got me?" Tommy knows that as good a guy as Frank is, as Zen and Jedi-master as he can be, he is serious about dumping Tommy if Tommy doesn't play by the rules. So he nods.

He finds a mat up against the wall, tosses his duffel on it and uses it as a pillow. Dozes off twice, because he must be in a sleep deficit, either that or his body's checking out on him. Reads a couple of Frank's fitness magazines (including a fairly scary article about Junior dos Santos). Keeps his mind off Mom and the Iraqi girl and the platoon and the brig and his damaged shoulder. Drinks water until it's time for lunch, going through about one 16-ounce bottle an hour. So he pees a lot too, but the good news is that things seem to be lightening up some on that front. Also, he feels better as the morning goes on, less achy and less tired. He lets himself think about Kelly, but just a little, because it hurts.

Frank goes out and brings back big hoagie sandwiches for lunch (which he never does) and insists that Tommy eat all of the chicken-avocado-tomato-on-wheat one. "You need the carbs," he insists. "You've been skimping on them. I can tell just from looking at you." The sandwich tastes like chicken sprinkled with iron filings, not nearly as bad as breakfast, and he's starting to figure out that whatever's happening to his taste buds has been because of his … whatsit, CK levels.

"Frank, why the hell do you care?" Tommy has never been able to figure Frank out, and that might be because Frank doesn't want to be too easy to read. Jedi Masters never are, or they can't be Jedi Masters. But the thing is, Frank's personal life is a big blank. He's not married. He practically lives at the gym. You never see him with a girl. You never see him with a guy, either. He doesn't get Frank's deal.

"Seriously?" Frank says, slicing up an orange on the cutting board in his office. "You really want to know? Well, besides the obvious, that I'm training you and I have certain responsibilities, that I'm a human who cares about the other human beings in my life, it's because I love your brother."

Tommy blinks. He remembers Frank's arm around Brendan at Sparta, Frank talking urgently to Brendan over in the corner. "Oh."

"He's like the brother I never had," Frank says. "And it would _kill _him if I let something happen to you."

Tommy nods. He thinks of Brendan, of seeing Brendan through a glass wall at Sparta two years ago. It had hurt like hell then. But seeing it in his mind now, he notices how the look on Brendan's face had rolled through surprise and guilt and settled on something that seemed a lot like longing. As if Brendan had maybe missed him as much as he'd missed Brendan.

"Orange?" Frank passes him three slices, and he takes them.

Dr. Fowler pops in over lunchtime and takes some blood. Does a sort of half-assed physical exam, pokes around here and there, presses on Tommy's abdomen and raises his eyebrows when Tommy can't restrain a hiss of pain. Asks Tommy to fill a different specimen cup. "I'll let you know," he tells Frank in the office, taking both specimen cups with him, the dark one and the newer, lighter one. "I think kidney-liver function may be compromised, certainly the liver is tender, but this is a fairly easy fix if rest and hydration start bringing the numbers down. If they're not any better tomorrow, we'd want to think about a couple of sessions of hemodialysis. I'll call you as soon as I have results."

_Hemodialysis? Fucking, fucking hell._

_Maybe Kelly will look after me._

_As if she needs somebody else to take care of. She needs to take care of herself. And the boys. Jesus, I'm a health liability too. Fuck. _

Frank thanks the doctor. Pulls out his cell phone, sends a text, and tosses Tommy another bottle of water. "Okay," he says to Tommy. "Close the door." Tommy, suspicious, leans over and closes it. "Now listen. I don't need to know what's on your mind, unless you want to tell me, but I care that it is screwing with your physical health. You need to talk to a professional about whatever it is. _Today_. Get some help, Tommy. I can't be fighting against you like this."

Tommy can feel his ears flushing hot red. "I'm not goin' to see a shrink."

"Yes, you will," Frank says calmly. "Because whatever-it-is is eating you alive, and I mean that literally."

Tommy shakes his head, feeling the flush travel from his ears to the rest of his face. Go to see a shrink and talk about all the ways that he's had his life fucked up, and all the ways he's fucked it up himself, and how he's been a victim whose family turned on him and he has PTSD and survivor guilt and he's a time bomb and a menace who belongs in a cage? "No."

"Well, then, you're gonna talk to me," Frank says, and leans against the desk with his arms crossed.

Tommy shakes his head and stands up. "I gotta go."

"The hell you're getting' outta here without talkin' to me!" Frank moves to the door, and now he's just one more thing between Tommy and freedom, between Tommy and peace of mind.

"Move," Tommy says, and gives Frank the don't-fuck-with-me warning eye as he steps closer. Adrenaline's a seductive cocktail hitting his bloodstream, giving him energy, preparing him for battle.

Frank shakes his head and sighs. "Look, man, this stops right here. You don't order me around in my gym."

"I don't need to _be_ in your gym," Tommy says, relaxing under the certainty that Frank will either move, or Tommy will move him. "_Move. Now_." Last warning. It's a full-on Marine Staff Sergeant bark, and for half a second Frank is intimidated.

Then Frank straightens to a neutral stance, finally realizing that he's not going to Jedi-master Tommy out of this, and in the time it takes for him to adjust, Tommy's reaching out with both hands to shove Frank to the side, and hooking a foot around Frank's ankle so he can't brace against the shove, and Frank's on the floor, and the office door is slamming hard enough into the wall to crack the glass and knock a hole in the drywall. Then Tommy is out of the office and moving swiftly without running to the outer door, grabbing up his duffel on the way out. He swings onto the bike and is out of the parking lot in seconds.

Without thinking he's on his way back to Brendan's, his home base, but the minute he gets there he realizes that it isn't home, it's just his base of operations. It's Brendan's home. Not his.

The Corps isn't home anymore. Pilar's little ranch house in El Paso, that's still Manny's home. Even Pop's house, that's not home. It's a place he lived once when he was part of a family – a screwed-up family, for sure, but if home is the place you belong, that isn't it.

If home is anywhere, it's Kelly. Not her house, her presence. And he wants so badly to be with her right now that all his bones ache with it, even the little bones of his feet, every part of him. _Kelly. Oh, Kelly. _

It's then that he understands what he's done. He's just wrecked his home gym – wrecked that relationship, at the very least. And if Kelly's home, it is only a matter of time until he wrecks her, too.

Another thing he's learned: shame burns. It's like a fire in your skin, and nothing can cool it.

So here he is again, homeless. Two and a half years after he was walking the streets of the 'Burgh, heading for Pop's because he had nowhere else to go, he still doesn't belong anywhere in the world. If he doesn't belong anywhere, it doesn't matter where he is. But he can't stay here anymore.

With that, he's committed. He unlocks the door and goes in. Tess and the children must still be at the pool, but he doesn't have much time before he'll have to explain, and he'd rather slide down razor blades. His room – the room he's been staying in – is already neat, but he takes the time to make it look perfect: fresh sheets, bathroom spic and span, not a thing on the floor. It doesn't take long to move his clothes from the dresser to the duffel because he doesn't have many. The footlocker containing personal things, that sat in the spare room at Manny's all the time he was deployed and which Pilar finally sent to him at Pop's four months ago... that'll have to stay. Brendan can store it. It's got Mom's things in it; Brendan might like to have them. Give them to the girls, maybe.

He takes the duffel bag out through the garage, wheeling the bike in to park it and then closing the garage door. The bike stays; it's Brendan's, after all. He's about to leave when he thinks of something else. He goes back to the kitchen and takes the magnetic pad Tess uses to write her grocery lists off the fridge and tears off a page. Finds a pen.

_Brendan, I'm sorry. I just can't stay. You and me, we are okay, it's nothing wrong there or with Tess and the girls. I just can't be here anymore. I will try to call sometime. Tell Frank I'm sorry too. Thanks for everything. – Tommy._

He leaves the house key on top of it, and locks the door behind him.


	33. Chapter 33: New Hotness

**Chapter 33: New Hotness**

Jen had managed to get off work on Sunday night so she could go to the Sunday Slammer amateur tournament with the other Steve's Girls and watch Pedro fight. They'd all had a great time – Pedro had won easily, and the other fights were pretty interesting as well.

When they announced the fourth card, Jen was puzzled by how familiar one of the fighters looked to her, and the more she stared, the more familiar he looked and the more elusive his identity was. Somebody she'd seen at The Palomino? A guy she'd seen at another amateur fight? Some UFC fighter slumming it? But the name, Casey "The Crusher" Finnegan, _that _name she'd swear wasn't right.

He was handsome, too, despite the crooked teeth. The face was familiar, the pattern of the tattoos familiar... where had she seen this guy before?

Didn't matter, really. He was fun to watch. The next card was pretty exciting too, with one guy pummeling his opponent into submission within about three minutes, and then the last fight ending in a tapout after a nasty-looking armbar. She'd practically forgotten about Finnegan after the tourney was over and the Girls were waiting to carpool back home with Pedro and Steve, except that Steve said something.

He was asking his usual sort of were-you-paying-attention questions about the fights they'd seen. "Okay, I'm gonna ask... which one of those guys we saw tonight would you predict to go pro successfully?"

"Just one?" Clarice had asked.

"Maybe two," Steve had said. "But one of them I think is a lock for it. Maybe already is pro, just fighting incog tonight."

Somebody threw out the name of the light heavyweight who'd been dealing bloody punches, but Steve shook his head. "Nope. He was sloppy and he got lucky. Somebody else." He looked around the group. "Jen, who do you say?"

"The middleweight," Jen had said. "Finnegan? I think that was it. He was _playing _with his guy, reeling him in like a fish. He's way better than we saw tonight. Steve, I swear I think I've seen him somewhere."

"I think I have too," Steve had said.

And now it's Monday the week following, and Jen's working out with some kettlebells. She'll do some core work later, the old punching situp type of thing, but for now she's working her delts and traps. She's counting reps and sets, pretty focused, and then the door opens and a shaft of sunlight falls across her face and makes her squint. She looks up.

And_ he_ walks in.

All of a sudden she knows who he is. Who he really is. She tries not to stare as he comes in, has a word or two with Steve at the front desk, and then steps into the gym to check it out. Medium height, looks like. Dark hoodie with the sleeves cut off, hood up despite the heat outside. The shoulder-and-arm tats she remembers; there's sunlight glancing off the distinctive blade of the nose, and there's that fuck-you expression in the eyes. Little bit of don't-mess-wit'-me roll in the walk. But it's really the mouth that gives him away, of course; there's not a woman she knows who could resist noticing that mouth. Heavy stubble around it now. He's carrying a duffel bag that probably weighs half what she does. Maybe he's been sleeping rough – there are circles under his eyes. And _still _you look. You_ have_ to look. Because, just _damn, _that is hot.

Clarice leans over into her space to watch as he walks toward Lou's little office in the back. She says, "Ummm-_ump_. That is some _fine_ piece a white-boy ass, I tell you what." She's not quiet about it, and his head almost twitches in their direction.

"Oh, I have to agree, that is some Grade-A Prime beef," Jen says, but quietly. "Don't embarrass him," she tells Clarice. "It's not nice."

"Oh, he has to know he's walkin' round lookin' good," Clarice says.

Jen turns her back toward Lou's office and laughs, biting her lip to be quiet. Because Clarice is right, he probably knows why the girls are staring. How could any man that fine-looking not know?

"You know who that is, don't you?" she says to Clarice, fully expecting Clarice to recognize him from Sunday.

"No, and I don't care. Boy is gorgeous."

"We saw him last Sunday. That middleweight Steve was so impressed with. Finnegan, remember?" She doesn't say his other name, because Clarice wasn't into MMA two years ago.

"That's him?" Clarice looks again. "_Mmm_.They needed better light in that place."

"I _know_. But we're wasting time. You need your arm back in condition if you're ever gonna get anywhere with it."

Jen goes back to the kettlebells and tries to stop thinking about men. There's Gorgeous Grey living next door, totally unavailable, and that blond guy with the Harley who comes to The Palomino on Thursday nights, but she bets he's married and out of the house without the wife once a week. And twenty feet away is this stunning example of masculinity. Talk about temptation.

He and Lou come out of Lou's little mousehole of an office, and he looks a little less grim. He sets the duffel bag down next to the wall, out of the way, and yanks off the hoodie to reveal a black tank. Yep, those tattoos, they're pretty distinctive. That's Tommy Riordan for sure, and he is every bit as hot as he'd been on Youtube.

He heads over to the free weights and starts a slow routine with weights much lighter than she'd have guessed he'd use. She finishes up with the kettlebells and then Steve comes over to start her and Clarice on a footwork exercise, and she gets focused on that. Footwork is fun. She'd always wanted to dance when she was little, but foster kids so rarely get the opportunity to participate in athletics or music lessons, and she'd just never asked. She'd seen "The Blind Side," with that nice family who adopted the kid who turned out to be a great athlete like their other kids, and they'd made sure he had all the opportunities, but that is so rare as to be ridiculous. _ Anyway_. Here she is a grown woman now, dancing all over the mat with striking fists at the ready, and it is a blast. She loves it.

Over the week that follows, she keeps watching from a distance. OnTuesday Lou introduces the guy simply as "Tommy" and says he'll be training with Lou. Lou must already have explained about Steve's Girls, because Tommy just nods at them, shakes hands briefly when Lou introduces them all, looks each woman in the face and steps back like a gentleman. And not one interested in asking any of them out, either. Jen has never been quite so thoroughly ignored before. Even Steve, who is devoted to his wife Lisa, will occasionally let his eyes wander Jen's body briefly before catching himself.

Tommy Riordan keeps himself to himself. Doesn't talk, unless it's necessary. Doesn't smile. There's an inwardness to his unfocused gaze, as if he's looking at something in his mind, something that pains him. He fades into walls and the back of the room as if he's doing it on purpose. If anybody not a gym regular comes in the door, he's finding something to do in a part of the gym where he won't be noticed. The man seems to want to disappear, and because Jen recognizes her pained and persecuted earlier self in that wish, she leaves him alone.

So she does her best to forget about the gorgeous slice of man walking around Russo's, because he so clearly wants to be left alone, and she focuses on the Philly Girls Punchout coming in August. She works out. She watches her diet. She spars with Steve and Alexa and, toward the end of the week, Clarice, who is finally getting the strength back in what used to be her pitching arm. She doesn't stare. She pokes Clarice when Clarice stares, or says borderline rude things about his fine body (it_ is _fine, true, but Jen keeps that to herself), and she gets up in Becka's face when Becka starts wearing shorts halfway up her ass to work out in and walking around sexy on purpose. It ticks her off – it's not_ professional_. She doesn't want Russo's to turn into the place guys go work out when they get ideas about screwing girls who can fight back. Steve's there, and Lou, to make sure the other gym clients leave them alone, but if the girls themselves start making exceptions and acting like they're available, all hell will break loose. Jen will not have that, not here in her place.

It says Russo's Gym on the sign. Lou owns the building. Steve runs the girls' workouts. But almost more than her very own apartment – the first place she ever really felt was hers – this place belongs to Jen as well.

At home, she might have half an hour to watch Big Bang Theory with Grey and Dagan, or to hang out with Cole while they do laundry. And sometimes she has breakfast with Amber, when Amber's a little hungover or down. Does she tell any of them that a minor celebrity works out at her gym, no more than twenty feet from the area where Steve works with his girls? No, she doesn't. Because he wants to be left alone, and while she's pledged to not remember the details of her childhood, sometimes she remembers how attention when you feel awful about yourself just makes you feel worse.

He keeps his head down and works out, and every so often Lou will come over to him and tell him to knock off, he's done – which is something Lou never does, monitor anybody else's workouts. Not even Jesse's or Logan's or Pedro's. Lou will tell his fighters what to do, and then he lets them go do it; Lou's hands-off a lot of the time. But with this guy, Lou's all up in his business at least a couple of times a day. It's odd. Jen wonders why. Tommy might have asked Lou to do it, maybe. It's never to push harder, it's always to slow the guy down.

And another thing that's new: drug testing. It happened this week, within a few days of when Tommy showed up – Lou started insisting that every one of the fighters currently being trained needed to be tested for a whole slew of things. Jen doesn't worry about that kind of stuff; she's clean when it comes to steroids, and the few times she needs a Percocet, she's got a doctor's prescription for them (nonspecific back pain) so she's covered that way too. So it's no big deal, except that the gym's monthly fees went up $6.

But Jen had seen Riordan's face when the drug testing announcement was made, and although it didn't change much his eyes got narrow and he made it a point to stop into Lou's office and close the door. She doesn't know what was said in there, but there hasn't been any trouble over the drug testing policy, so maybe it doesn't matter that much.

Work's been crazy over the last couple of weeks, too. The hot weather starts in the summer and people are insane. Two girls got into a catfight last week at The Palomino, which is better known for its live music than its partying scene, pulling hair and scratching with long fingernails, and the guy they were fighting over standing there looking smug, as if he was even worth the trouble. (Jen hopes he's great in bed, or _some_ poor girl is going to be disappointed.) Grey came in for his drink on a Tuesday night, when it tends to be slow, and sat around talking to her when she wasn't busy. It was the best day she'd had at work in a long time, and it occurs to her afterward that maybe she's a little bit lonely.

There might be time for a boyfriend later, though. Right now she's training, and working, and that's enough.

Nine days Tommy Riordan has been at Russo's Gym now, and not one word beyond the absolutely necessary (like, "Excuse me," and "Are you done with the weights?") has the man said to any of them. Not to Steve, or Pedro, or any of the Girls at all. It's irking Clarice to death, because she certainly makes enough comments about his body, trying to provoke some kind of response. But nothing. It's like he doesn't even _hear_ Clarice, who is anything but quiet.

Alexa calls him "New Hotness." That started one day when he was standing next to Lou, who looks every one of his 58 years and then some: just like in that Men in Black movie, there's Old and Busted, and there's New Hotness. It's Marisa who starts the conversation pool. Chip in a dollar, and the whole pool belongs to the first girl Tommy says anything personal to. "Nah, we need higher stakes," Jen says. "Five bucks." So it's agreed, five bucks to enter the pool, and the conversation has to be overheard or at least witnessed in some way by a third party. "No cheating, either. No telling us that 'I'll be done with the 8-pound medicine ball in ten minutes' was 'You have pretty eyes.' None of that crap. And if you ask the question first and he just answers it, that doesn't count either. It has to be a personal remark instigated by him."

It's agreed, and now there's $30 in the pot, just waiting to be won.

The next day Lou pulls them all in right after lunch, all the fighters in training, even pulls New Hotness and Logan out of the ring where they've been sparring. "Minor problem," he explains. "We just had a building inspection, and we have a serious electrical problem with these old wires in the building." Everybody looks around at the ancient walls, which do look like a gang of spatially-challenged drunk guys put them up in about 1834. "Gotta get that taken care of before we catch the building on fire. I need everybody to go home. I'm sorry about it, and the electrical guys are gonna try to work on it this evening so we'll be ready to go in the morning, or at least as early as possible tomorrow. Gotta get the other patrons out too, gotta put a sign on the door why we're closing up. But you guys get on outta here, go home. And don't panic."

Jen has a brief out-of-body Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe moment where she wonders where her towel is, and then she sees it, blue and white stripes, right next to the kettlebells where it should be, and she laughs at herself a little. Then she gazes around at the others. A couple of the fighters are looking like they just got an unexpected snow day off school. Becka looks thrilled, for one. And a couple of them look as frustrated as she feels.

Tommy Riordan looks like he might burn holes in the floor with his eyes any minute. He is seriously pissed off. While she happens to be watching him, he says, "Fuck," so quietly you can't hear him, but it's sure easy to read his lips._ (God, those lips.) _ Out loud, he says to Lou, "So we're back up by tomorrow noon or so?"

"I _hope_ earlier," Lou says, and leaves them to it while he goes around the room explaining to people and chivvying them out the door, getting Steve to make a "CLOSED" sign and hang it up.

Jen shakes her head. It's 3:20 pm on a Wednesday, and enough time has suddenly opened up in her schedule that she can go shopping for groceries and get all her laundry done and maybe even cook some stuff for later in the week, which is awesome, and maybe she can watch some DVR'ed Dr. Who with Grey and he can explain it to her this time before she has to go to work. Which is even cooler. So she goes and does that, gets all that stuff accomplished, gets a jump on the rest of the week, and it feels excellent. (Well, she still doesn't get Dr. Who, but she gathers that not quite getting the show is pretty normal.) New Hotness and his damn sexy lips don't even enter her mind again until very late. _Very_ late. Like, nearly 4 am and she's going to bed after work, _that _late. And she drifts off to sleep thinking about him.

At 11:30 the next morning she's parking her motorcycle in the alley by Russo's, and he's there, wearing a white tee and jeans, leaning up against the wall with his duffel bag and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He's got one foot kicked back to rest on the wall, the other on the ground, and he looks all James Dean cool until she gets a glimpse of his face, and he's anything _but _cool. He's still PO'ed.

"What, we're still shut down?" she asks him as she takes off her helmet. "Nobody called me. Anybody call you?"

He shrugs. "Cell's off."

_Does that count for the pool?,_ she wonders to herself, and decides it doesn't. He was answering a question. And nobody could confirm it anyway. "Sucks. Hope they can get it fixed soon."

He nods. Doesn't meet her eyes. And even though he is standing completely still, she gets the sudden impression that in reality he is a caged tiger, pacing around, barely restrained. She can't hold back a little shiver. He cuts his eyes over at her; apparently her involuntary movement triggered his motion sensor. Well, if she remembers correctly he'd been in the military. Probably that makes a guy jumpier than normal.

"Chilly in the shade," she says, to explain. It's not that chilly. The air outside's pretty warm. Philly in late June, what an absolute picnic... "Let's go see if Lou will give us an ETA on doors-open-again." Without waiting for him, she walks toward the front of the building, and he follows her.

Lou happens to be standing just inside, visible behind the glass, talking to a foreman-looking dude with a hard hat and a clipboard, and she knocks on the glass to get his attention. Lou sees her, holds up one finger meaning "in a minute," and she nods.

"You have a good day yesterday?" she asks Tommy, just trying to be nice.

He shakes his head. "I need to be training. If I'm not training, it's not a good day."

"Oh." Talk about living for your work. "I got a bunch of stuff done I don't normally get done. Which was pretty cool, actually. Did some laundry. Cooked some stuff." He nods, and then Lou comes outside in his hard hat.

"What's up, there, girlie?" he says to Jen, and then nods at Tommy.

"Wanted to know what time we'll be back up and running," she says, trying to make her voice sound unconcerned.

"They say 5 pm," Lou says dubiously, "but I think that really means tomorrow morning."

Tommy the New Hotness just shakes his head. And there's something in the way his shoulders look that tells her it's not just that he won't be able to work out. It's being with people – even people he barely talks to – that he's missing, and then once she realizes _that_, the other shoe drops. He has nowhere to go. Or maybe the place he does have is so sucky that he'd rather be anywhere but there.

"Don't worry about it," Lou says, and pats Tommy clumsily on the back. "Just go on home and take a break. We'll be back up tomorrow. It's nearly done, I can tell that much." Tommy nods, and Lou goes back inside to talk to the other hard-hatted guy again.

"Lou doesn't understand," Jen says to Tommy, and is gratified to see his head jerk around, like she's finally said something significant enough for him to pay attention to. He just looks at her, though, challenging her without any words. So she ponies up, and explains something she'd never be able to explain to the others. "None of them do. They don't know. They have no idea what it's like to haul your life around in a garbage bag. To not have a place where you belong. But I grew up in foster care, and I know."

He blinks twice. Still doesn't say anything, but he's riveted on her now, and now she knows for sure: there's no place he belongs. There's a little twist inside her chest, not because she feels sorry for him or anything, just because she's felt that way too. She doesn't dwell on the past. Tries, in fact, not to remember it at all. But sometimes she can't help remembering. Like now.

"You got a place to be?" she asks. It's not pity. It's not even curiosity. It's I've-been-there-myself, and maybe it just shows, because he shrugs. He takes the toothpick out of his mouth, and then, astoundingly, he speaks to her.

"Been stayin' at one of those chippy motels," he says. "But it's gettin' to me. Between the cockroaches inside and the screams outside, I can't sleep nights."

She nods. She was right, he's been sleeping rough. "Look. I have an apartment not that far from here. Plenty of room, and nobody will bug you there. No screaming outside." He blinks again, and she explains further. "I have to work tonight, got an 8:30 to 2:30 shift at the bar. But I have a good couch, and a shower, and you're welcome to 'em. My neighbors are good guys, too. They look out for me. It's safe."

"_Safe," _ he says, and there's something ironic and darkly amused in his voice. Like Satan himself knows to stay away from the guy, he's that bad-ass. "I ain't worried about what's goin' on _outside._ What's in my head's twenty times worse." And then he closes his lips around that toothpick again, as if he's said enough to incriminate himself. So maybe he's not that bad-ass, he's just that tormented already.

"Well," she says, with an air of _that's that_. "You come on back to my place for a couple of days or so, just till we get things sorted out."

"You sure?" he asks her in that scratchy voice of his. Very steady, though. "I've roughed it worse than this, I'm okay."

"Be nice to have company," she says. Which is true. She likes having someone else in the place. And also, she can't _wait_ to see Clarice's face later.

**A/N: I only have a vague idea of where this is going before something else happens... could really use some feedback on this at the moment, and thanks in advance for reviews. Mwah, darlings.**


	34. Chapter 34: Drifting

**Ch 34 Drifting**

Leaving Brendan's house, Tommy has a moment of sheer panic. Which way to go? _Where_ to go? He heads, almost by instinct, away from any direction where anyone who knows him might be. Away from Kelly's house to the east, away from the pool to the southwest, away from the gym and the high school to the northwest. It means north and a little east into downtown, and he's so agitated that he walks fast, and it's only when he gets tired that he remembers the whole you-could-kill-yourself deal. Gotta get out of here. Got to.

But where can he go? Not Pop's house. Frank talks to Brendan, and Brendan talks to Pop now. No, not Pittsburgh. Somewhere else.

Not Tacoma, either, because what that place means to him now is Mom dying. If he goes anywhere near the place he'll go to her grave because he promised he would come sometime, and right now he can't stand the idea. Somewhere else.

Not the other cities he knows, San Diego or El Paso. Somewhere else. He hops a city bus and asks the driver how to get to the Greyhound station. The driver says, "This bus line will take you there, sir," and tells him the fare. He's got some cash in his pocket, he's okay for money. He sits down and worries about how good it feels to not be walking and how far he might get before he keels over dead and how much Kelly might cry, or not cry, when they find his lifeless body.

_Shit. _

It's not that far to the Greyhound station on Filbert Street downtown. He gets off there and starts looking over the ticket board. Where can he go? All the city names are getting muddled up in his head, and he just sits down in one of the junky chairs there and holds his head. New York, Cleveland, Washington DC, Norfolk, Charlotte, Atlanta, Orlando... He wants to_ go_, he wants to just get on any bus, destination anywhere, get the hell out of here.

And at the same time, something won't let him. He keeps seeing Brendan's face, Brendan saying that Emily was worried about him. They're _all_ going to worry about him. Frank too.

God, _Frank_... he hopes he hasn't really hurt Frank. He doesn't think so, but now the idea is really bugging him. All Frank ever did was try to help him. Did help him. And he's ruined that. What's hurting more now than getting banned, as Frank had threatened, is that Frank has been a friend, Frank has helped, and he just wrecked it. Fuck. Is he forever going to be wrecking all the best things? He ditched the Corps, he couldn't help Manny, he couldn't help any of the guys. He couldn't help Mom, he couldn't stay with Pop, he couldn't stay with Brendan. He threw Frank's help back in Frank's face, and even though leaving Kelly is the best thing for her he knows it's going to hurt her, he _knows_ that, and he's still doing it because he doesn't see what else he can do. Because leaving will hurt, but staying would eventually be worse.

He is the worst goddamn fuckup in the history of earth, ever, except for maybe Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

He stands up. Let it be Orlando, then. That's the farthest he can get on an express bus.

But when he gets to the front of the ticket line, he can't say it. Starts to say "Orlando," and can't get it out of his throat; it's suddenly just impossible. He can't leave here. He can't run far enough for it to make any difference, anyway. He will still be _himself_ in Orlando. He shakes his head at the customer service woman, and leaves the line.

He leaves the bus station and starts walking. Anywhere, it doesn't matter. He walks until it's dark and he's starving and the words have all dried up in his throat. His cell phone's been ringing all afternoon, either the tinny doodle-doodle of a phone call or the ding-dong doorbell sound of a text message, and he's been ignoring it, but finally he just turns it off without looking at it. He finds a hole-in-the-wall diner somewhere and goes in. He manages to order tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich and a Coke, double order of everything please, and screw eating for Sparta, he wants comfort.

The food settles him a little, and he leaves the waitress a nice tip and goes back out, duffel bag slung across his chest. He walks.

Walks long into the night, slowly but steadily, without a purpose, sometimes around the same three-block square over and over again and sometimes straight ahead for blocks. Nobody bothers him. He couldn't even be sure whether anybody actually speaks to him or not. At some point he gets tired, and there's a park bench, so he lies down with his head on his duffel bag and sacks out for a couple of hours. When morning comes he walks until he finds a Waffle House. Has breakfast of some kind and uses their bathroom, and _thank God,_ at least he's not peeing orange any more. It still doesn't look right, but he doesn't feel like he's going to die at the moment.

He walks all day again, slowly, just looking at things and not letting himself think. He eats when he gets hungry; he walks some more. Sleeps in the bus station for a few hours, and then when they close at 2 am he walks again. _This is gonna get old_, he thinks. _I have to find a place_._ I can't keep drifting. _

At some point, when the sun is coming up, he sits down outside a building and rests his head against the wall. He's so sleepy he can't walk anymore, and as his brain shuts down, it drifts through things he's been resolutely stuffing away when conscious: Kelly's kisses. Pop's embrace. Brendan's smile. Jack talking about roller coasters and ketchup-stained Martin climbing into his lap. Mom so tired, lying in the bed too exhausted to cough anymore. And then he's gone, diving into the lake of sleep, only waking up when somebody honks a horn on the street not far away.

Thursday he spends largely in the public library, moving around the building a lot and dozing from time to time. This is the last day he really spends without a place to sleep; he's got some money in his bank account and he can use it if he wants. Getting arrested for vagrancy would screw up everything, so first he goes by an ATM, and then he finds a cheap dingy motel. It's old and cramped and in disrepair, and he can tell from the clandestine activity around the corners of the building that it's a haven for druggies. He goes to the public library again, reading stuff. Magazines. History. He finds some weird book called The Valley of Horses, and starts to read it, and then he gets engrossed in it. Goes back the next couple of days to read some more. It's not bad.

He stays away from the druggies until Saturday evening, when the ache for everything he's lost gets so bad that he goes outside and asks one of them, a girl with her hair dyed completely dead black, if she knows where he can get some Valiums. Or Percocets, he's not picky. She digs in her pocket and gets out a baggie with some pills in it. "Percs. Forty bucks," she says, seeming not to care whether he says yes or no. He has no idea if that's the going rate, what dosage they are, or even if those pills are legit. He squints closer at the baggie. Six in there. Round pale blue things, the 5mg ones, drug name impressed into the pills – yeah, they look legit. Not the lowest dose, not the highest. He'll have to be careful, but if he is... it'll help. He holds out two twenties to her and she gives him the bag.

He goes back into his room and locks his flimsy door. _One. Just one. _

And it does help; he stops wanting to kill himself and sleeps most of the night. When he wakes up, his pee is almost normal-looking again. He puts the baggie inside a pair of socks near the bottom of his duffel bag, where he'll really have to dig around to find it. Not that he's kidding himself. If things get really bad, he'll dig, oh yes he will. If things get really bad he'll have no shame about it.

On Sunday morning he gets up and hits the little diner down the street for a Western omelet and some whole wheat toast and coffee, and it tastes good. No Percocet tonight, he decides. Only for drastic days, and this one is going to be pretty decent. He goes back to the room and goes back to bed; he dozes off and on all day, only getting up to drink water and eat some of the beef jerky and raisins he has stashed in his bag. It's late when he wakes up, _sproing_, really awake, and it's the first time his head's been really clear in days. So he goes and gets dinner at a different restaurant just before they close for the night: grilled chicken, a giant salad, a baked potato and some fresh fruit.

He's got to start training again. Even if Frank's got him banned from Sparta III, he'll need to see if he can jump in somewhere and pick up some little fights, just for the prize money. Actually, the more he thinks about Frank getting him blacklisted from the sport the more he thinks that's totally unlike Frank, and maybe that was just a threat to get Tommy to take it seriously and pay attention to his health.

But he actually feels pretty good right now. Maybe the several days of doing nothing much have helped – the pain in his liver is gone, and his pee's back to a normal color, and he's got no more aches than could be expected from sleeping on a terrible squishy mattress after park benches and sitting up in a hard chair at the library.

On the way back to his current address, what he's calling in his mind the No-Tell Druggie Motel, he decides he'll start looking for a new gym tomorrow. And when he drops his duffel on the floor near the crappy bed (he takes it with him when he leaves, that door lock isn't secure), he digs through it to find his cell phone. He really ought to text Brendan that he's alive and okay and please not to call the cops on him as a missing person.

He doesn't think he could stand to hear Brendan's voice, all worried and full of love. Bren will tell Kelly he's okay, too. And Pop. No, he couldn't talk to anybody right now.

He thinks one more time about going back to stay with Pop. Pop wouldn't mind, he guesses, but then he'd have to find a new gym anyway, since Colt's is out of the question. Every time he thinks about leaving Philly something in his heart just says _NO_. On top of that, some small, rational part of his brain says, _Idiot, you've got to face this sometime or it will never get any better_. But he doesn't know how. He just has to figure it out. He'll just drift for awhile, and trust that his roots are long enough to pull him back when it's time.

The cell's dead after so many days of not being charged up. He has to unplug the TV to get enough space in the room's one socket for his charger. It's okay, he wasn't going to watch TV anyway. He repacks his duffel and decides he really should do some laundry; he's got more dirty clothes as he has clean ones. Laundromat tomorrow, then new gym. While the phone charges he takes a shower but doesn't bother to shave. The scruff's gotten to a comfortable stage now, even if it's not a full-on beard.

When he's ready for bed, wearing clean boxers and feeling about 600% better than he did the day he left Brendan's, he unplugs the phone and turns it on. There are 53 – yes, fifty-three – new text messages on it, and his voice mailbox is full. Huh. That's a lot of messages. It's borderline annoying, actually. He just deletes all the texts without opening them and leaves the mailbox full, then sets about composing a message to Brendan. He finally settles on this:

_Hey. Wanted to let you know I'm okay. Found a place to stay. Feeling a lot better. Dont worry. Dont call the cops either. Pls tell pop & kelly & frank I am fine. Cell will be off so dont bother sending msgs._

He sends that, and then is nagged by a feeling that he ought to say something else, too. So he sends one more: _Love you bro_. He turns the phone off, turns the lights out, and settles in for some sleep.

Which doesn't come. Probably he slept too long today. And it's loud outside, with people's voices and car traffic and police sirens; he'll need some earplugs or something. He turns the light back on and rummages around in the duffel for the MP3 player Brendan and Tess had given him shortly after he moved in. It had been a Christmas present they'd saved knowing that he wouldn't be able to have it in the brig, and Brendan had loaded it with some Springsteen and CCR and, oddly, Maroon 5, which isn't horrible but it's not what Tommy would have chosen himself. All the same, it's something Brendan did for him, and that was pretty cool. Of course, its battery is dead too, but the earphones block some of the noise.

He thinks about sleeping next to Brendan up in Benjy Williams' treehouse when they were kids. Wonders if he could pinpoint the exact moment his life slid into chaos, or whether it was destined to go there the moment he was born. That's pretty cynical, he admits. And look at Brendan, his life isn't in chaos. Was it the choice to leave with Mom that did it? It's maybe not fair to call his life complete chaos, though, because there for awhile things felt really beautiful.

Kelly. Oh, God,_Kelly_. Just for a moment he lets himself wonder what she must be feeling right now. It's past midnight; is she even awake? Does she miss him? Does she feel abandoned and used, or is she counting her blessings and feeling lucky she's dodged a bullet?

Dammit, it was a mistake to think of her. His throat and his chest ache, and he gets a sudden mental flash of what she looks like spread out on her bed naked, reaching for him, so now he's rock-hard, all of his body aching for her. And now he's picked up an audio track on it too, her little moans and gasps and sighs, and his hands start remembering the sweet round shape of her ass, and the taste of her floods into his mouth, and _Christ_, he's not going to be able to sleep now, not with the memory of how it feels to plunge into her, all hot and slick and tight, her inner body gripping him like his own fist. It's not even a conscious decision, but now his eyes are closed, and his hand is pushing away his boxers and stroking his hard length, and he brings her there to him in his head, seeing her head thrown back, mouth open, seeing her breasts jiggle and watching the place where their bodies are joined, oh, _God_, Kelly...

When he can breathe again he's glad he never bothered to put on a clean tee-shirt, because he'd have had to add it to the laundry pile. But at least now he might be able to sleep. And without a Percocet, too.

In the morning, he has breakfast at the diner across the street again. The waitress, an older woman with hennaed hair and dark eyes, recognizes him and brings him coffee right away, and he thanks her. The Western omelet with whole wheat toast is just as good as it was yesterday, and Rosa, that's the waitress, finds him some fresh fruit – two kiwifruit and an orange. _This could turn into a habit_, he thinks, and shrugs. Could be worse. Pop eats out practically every meal, still. He asks Rosa if she knows where he could find a place to do laundry, and of course she knows exactly what's closest and draws him directions on a napkin.

So then he asks her if there's a gym nearby. She looks puzzled. He has to explain what he wants, and then she nods, uncertainly. "There's Russo's, if that's what you're looking for," she says. "It's not fancy. My husband used to like to go and watch the boxing there, but that was years ago, doll. In the 1970s, musta been, prolly before you were born." Rosa's got a real Philly accent, the kind that sits up front in the mouth and swallows the consonants.

The name sounds familiar, maybe from that tournament last week. He'd seen all the fight cards. Somebody in the second fight was from there, he thinks. He starts nodding at her. "Yeah, that's what I want."

She smiles. "What's your name, doll?" she asks him, while she's drawing further directions from the laundromat to Russo's on a separate napkin. "You don't haveta say, it don't matter, 'cept you look like my nephew a little." He tells her it's Tommy, and she pats his hand. "You take care, Tommy."

Funny how there's this whole world with pockets of sweetness hidden here and there, people just being nice because they can. It makes him feel very small, and just for a minute he misses Mom something awful, and then before he leaves he slides a $5 bill under his plate because Rosa's been so nice.

The laundromat's busy, kids running around and people coming in and out with laundry baskets, and sometimes black garbage bags. He sits and reads some of the newspaper. When his brain throws him a picture of Kelly walking past with her blue laundry basket on her hip, he buries it. He doesn't have all that much laundry, just a couple of loads, and he's done by noon.

He sets off for Russo's, double-checking the directions Rosa gave him, and deciding he might better pull up his hood. On the way he starts trying to figure out where he is, how far from St. Augustine's and downtown he is, and then he passes 19th Street, and he's been here before. He's not far from Kelly's Jesus-freaky church, and not far in the other direction from the church where Brendan and the family go.

And now he's on 14th St., checking Russo's Gym out. It's a beat-up joint, but he's used to that, and it's reasonably clean when he has a peek through the front windows. Looks like the equipment is adequate, too, at least close to the old-school stuff he'd used at Colt's in Pittsburgh. Some people in the building, including a little clutch of girls, but they're all working out, and it doesn't seem like the kind of place where people would stare a lot. It might do okay. So he goes in.

Has a word with a tall guy named Steve at the front, and when Tommy asks if they do any training this Steve guy looks him up and down and says, "Hey, you're Ri – Finnegan, right? Saw you at the Slammer last week. That was a great fight. Yeah, go back and tell Lou you'd like to work with him and see what he says. He liked you."

Tommy feels his eyebrows go up, but what the hell. Okay. He walks through the building to the little boxy office in the back, right past a pair of girls who are staring like he's naked instead of wearing a sleeveless hoodie and shorts, and pokes his head in the door. "Are you Lou?" he asks. "Steve up front told me to come talk to you."

So Lou tells him to come in, and he introduces himself simply as Tommy, no last name. He says what he's looking for and that he's got some experience; Lou might have seen him at the amateur tournament on Sunday, where he was fighting as "Finnegan." Lou says he remembers. After some chat and Lou's description of his training style (it's pretty old-school, like Pop's), they settle on some terms. He admits to not having a lot of income at the moment and that he'd like to start working some of the smoker fights if Lou's got contacts. Lou counteroffers that sure, he can get Tommy some fight berths, but what he really needs is a guy to clean up some around the place. He's got cleaners, but they're not very good and he can only afford them twice a month anyway. Probably two hours' worth of work a day, which Tommy figures is easy enough. "How about we swap the cleanin' work for the training insteada you payin' fees?" Lou asks, and Tommy shrugs. Fine by him. He signs some paperwork, scribbling his last name so messily that you can't tell what it says, and then Lou tells him about some of the gym policies, including that he is to leave Steve's Girls strictly alone, they are the apple of Lou's eye and anybody messin' with 'em is gonna get a face full of birdshot.

That impresses Tommy, that Lou's pretty laid-back about details, but is he ever protective of the women training in his building. He doesn't quite smile, Lou's too vehement about it, but it's another little pocket of nice just like Rosa the waitress this morning.

So they arrange that Tommy will start cleaning up the place early in the morning, and he's free to work out some now, if he likes. He does like, in fact. It beats having nothing to do. But he's careful to take it easy. He remembers what he was doing at Frank's gym two weeks ago and cuts that routine in half, and mentally slows it down. He can't afford to let himself get sick.

So he settles in at Russo's, keeping his head down and talking to nobody. He tunes everything else out; it's easier after he gets permission to charge up his MP3 player at Lou's computer when he comes in, so he can listen to stuff, even if it's only Springsteen and CCR.

For the first three days he doesn't think about Kelly at all. Every time his brain starts to flash on her smile or her smell, the feel of her embrace or the way she looks naked, God forbid, he shuts it down and thinks about something else. There are whole pieces of the past that he reclaims over just those three days: wrestling in middle school. Boot Camp. His senior-year history class in Tacoma, where he had this huge crush on a girl named Mariah, with long dark hair and legs so long you had to look twice. Nothing significant, but he remembers them.

On Thursday, though, he wakes up with Kelly's voice in his memory, from all those late-night phone calls, and he can't get her out of his head at all. During a weights workout, all of a sudden he's sort of pissed off at her, for not telling him to stop the first time he kissed her.

And what's up with that, anyway, a nice church-going Protestant girl laying it down so fast? Two parts of his head start arguing with each other, one of them pointing out that two and a half years is a long time to go without getting some, so of course it was an easy lay, and the other one shouting that she loves him, of course she loves him, and of course when you love someone you just want to be with that person all the time, as close and as naked as possible. The cynical part yells back that obviously Kelly is rotten at picking men, look at who she married. The believer says that she picked a bad one first go-round, so she knows what she wants now. Cynic says that of course Tommy's never done anything to hurt her, but that's no guarantee that he won't.

The believer says that of course Tommy wouldn't do anything to hurt her. Would never do anything to hurt her. But the believer's voice is unsure and shaky. _God, this fucking hurts. _Best thing to do is to just stay away, not take advantage, not ruin her life. And not fall on his knees and beg for her love. And not expect her to be the one waiting for him, for whenever he can manage to get his shit together, which could be decades from now.

He can't go back to her. And he'll have to tell her. All day he plans it. Call her? No, breaking up (he thinks of it as that, as if he's still fifteen) has to be done in person.

But if he sees her, the odds are extremely good that he won't be able to resist her, and that they'll wind up in bed again (_no, don't think about it_) and that will just make it harder to stop seeing her.

In public? But then nothing they said would be private. Dammit.

No, it will have to be a letter. He doesn't trust himself to muster the guts to tell her why and to counter her arguments, because she'll have them, and to make it stick. He's halfway inclined to chuck the whole thing and go to hell anyway. If he really loves her, maybe it will be okay. The way he feels, he'd rather jump off a bridge than hurt her. Rather charge straight into machine-gun fire, rather walk through a burning building.

But he's seen his parents' wedding photo: they look happy in it, smiling into each other's faces, full of joy and hope and what really, really looks like love. No. He can't trust himself to be who she needs.

After his workout, he stops at a drugstore to pick up a pack of very plain stationery and one of ink pens.

The first draft is messy. The second is even worse, probably because writing the first one has made him so emotional that the pen is skittering around on the paper like it's got the DT's, and he has to go outside and walk around the block for awhile under the stars and just _breathe_ before he starts again.

The third draft is neat and reasoned and calm. He addresses the envelope, puts the letter inside, seals it, stamps it. Puts it into a mailbox.

He does not allow himself to think of what she's doing right now, or whether she's hurt that he hasn't come back. After the decision, after writing the letter, he's empty. Everything is on the page, and he leaves it there. He's drained.

**A/N: Funny thing, I've taken Percocet after various medical procedures and found myself wanting to get off it as soon as possible; I don't like feeling fuzzy-headed. But it is highly addictive. I can't condone nonmedical use. I mean, look. Don't take prescription meds in any way your doctor didn't prescribe specifically for YOU. Just don't. That is all.**


	35. Chapter 35: Left and Leaving

**Ch 35: Left and Leaving**

Brendan feels wrong. Literally _wrong_, like there's no possible way he can still be walking around with part of his heart missing like this, like he's a medical freak. How did he screw it up so badly, how did he miss the signs?

How could he let his brother go again?

And as bad as it was the first time, at least Tommy's leaving all those years ago wasn't Brendan's fault. Tommy's "it's not you" note notwithstanding, and whatever was going on at the gym, Brendan is sure that this time, it _is_ his fault. He could have stopped him. He could have noticed something wrong and prevented it, he could have chased Tommy down and brought him back. Loved him into staying, maybe.

That day, Frank had texted him with a brief message that he had a bead on Tommy's medical problem and that it was bad but could be treated. And then not an hour later, Frank had called him worried as hell: Tommy had shoved Frank and walked out. Just _walked out_, as if Frank's gym had been a place as impersonal as the DMV, and the line was too long. Brendan had called Tess right away, but she hadn't been home either. And then that damn note, saying Tommy was gone. That he just couldn't stay.

Worse, Tommy didn't answer his phone. Keeps not answering his phone.

Brendan knows: when Tommy's hurting or scared, he runs. He ducks out. It's not an unreasonable defense for a child of a violent household to adopt. It had probably saved him a beating or two, or two hundred, to be honest.

But the fact is, Tommy's scared and he's hurting _now_, and Brendan wasn't here to help. Again. And it's just killing him, knowing that Tommy needs him... somewhere. Somewhere not here, somewhere Brendan can't get to him. Again. It claws at his guts. Yes, Tommy's an adult now, but Brendan can't quite see him as being separate from the skinny teenager with cracked ribs, staring at him out of the window of Mom's car as it turned the corner and left him behind.

He's wondered so many times, which of them was it who left? Who got left behind?

And the next time he'd seen Tommy, it was through a glass wall at Sparta, Tommy looking six years old and vulnerable and hurt, and Brendan's heart had just seized up.

There's a funny thing about being a parent, he's noticed. Emily's eight years old now, with two adult teeth and long hair, all elbows and knees, but sometimes when he looks at her he still sees the baby she was – bald, toothless, two feet long, skin like rose petals, the most precious thing he'd ever seen up to then (and still tied for first). No matter how old she gets, he'll always be able to look at her and see the baby.

Brendan can _still_ look at his baby brother and see the kid Tommy had been. The older he's gotten, the more he looks like Mom, and despite all the tattoo ink and the scars and the beard stubble, sometimes the boy shows through.

_I just got you back_, he says to the Tommy in his head. _I only just got you back, and we were __just starting to really talk again. You remember Benjy's treehouse, don't you? You remember all the nights we stayed awake in our room talking about superheroes?_

Fourteen years away from each other. Apart from the resentment, apart from the guilt, he'd missed Tommy so badly.

He picks up his iPhone and sends another text message to Tommy, unlike the rational "please come home, we can work everything out, you'll feel better once you get some medical attention, I miss you, don't do anything stupid, are you okay, Tess and the girls are devastated, come back to the gym at least, I'm worried about you, we can find you an apartment, if you need money I can send you some," messages he's been sending ever since Tommy left three days ago. This one just says, _I love you, Tommy_. Because that's what's deepest in his heart.

Tess wants to call the police. He lets her waffle on about it for awhile, because she's hurt and worried too, but finally he tells her that the police won't do a thing. According to that note, Tommy left of his own free will, and adults are still allowed to do that in the United States. Tess starts to cry. "He looks awful, Bren, he's sick. We have to find him before he gets sicker. What did your dad say?"

Pop – whom Brendan had called right away, no more than a couple of hours after he'd heard from Frank – has been calm about it on the surface, but Brendan's also in touch with Pop's AA sponsor Sam, and he knows Pop's having a tough time of it staying off the booze. Every day Brendan calls Pop just to see if he's okay. Sometimes twice, morning and evening. He's told Pop that if the call comes at 8 on the hour, it's just him checking in, and if he has news he'll call at any other time. Pop's still going to work at the mill, says it keeps his mind off things, but Brendan knows he's worried. And he feels guilty; for God's sake, Pop's got enough guilt for twenty people. "Hang in there, Pop, please," he tells his father. "Stay strong. Because he might need you. You have to be available. Call me if you need me. Call Sam. We got each other, okay? Don't give in. We'll get him home somehow."

Funny, just six months ago he couldn't have said anything like that to Pop – not even after Tommy's court-martial. Not until now, when Brendan needs Pop to stay sober.

What's keeping Brendan going right now? People, of course. Tess, who's burning through her cell minutes keeping the prayer chain at St. Augustine's up to date and distracting Brendan at night with as much loving as she can dish out. Emily and Rosie, who interrupt their games to hug their dad every time they think about it. Frank, who's been on the phone with every single trainer in town, risking some public ridicule by letting those guys know that Tommy Conlon's walked out of his gym and asking if anybody sees him to give Frank a call on the QT. Pop, who needs Brendan to not panic. Kelly, who's keeping Tess going by staying calm and cooking up a storm, and who's keeping Brendan going by insisting that they're not giving up, they just need to be patient and let Tommy work through his thing. Dan Zito, the principal at the high school, has become a real friend, offering a sympathetic ear.

His wrestlers, too. They demand enough of his attention that he can have at least a few hours a day where he's not worried sick. It's just conditioning; they won't be able to have an official practice until September, but the running and the weight room are somehow both separate from the drama and intimately threaded with echoes of his brother.

He's asked everybody he can think of what happened just before Tommy took off, just to try to get a clue. He knows about the medical thing and the sort-of shoving match Tommy got into with Frank – which Frank feels bad about, anyway. "I pushed him too hard," Frank said when he was telling Brendan about it. "And he warned me to get out the way. He warned me _twice, _and I should have realized it wasn't trash-talking because he never does that. My God, I wouldn't have wanted to face the guy in full military mode. He was completely determined."

Kelly, who has been uncharacteristically reticent about her flashback episode at the fight, said only that Tommy felt guilty about what had happened even though she'd assured him it wasn't his fault. Frank agrees that's part of what's going on with Tommy's head, based on what Jose told Frank. (The funny thing about it is that Jose seems to have gotten the impression that Kelly is Tommy's girlfriend. Well, Jose's maybe a little old-fashioned. Some of those Hispanic guys, depending on their cultural background, are just that way. A lot of them believe women don't go out on their own with friends; they only accompany men.) Poor Kelly, though – clearly it had taken a lot out of her, because she's been pale and weepy-eyed all week. It can't be all because of Tommy, even though they're friends and she's worried too. Brendan knows he should be checking up on her some, but he just doesn't have the wherewithal to do it. He just makes sure that both he and Tess hug her when she drops off and picks up the boys before and after work, and they leave it at that.

On Sunday night Tommy's been gone five days, and when Brendan's iPhone pings with another text message at past 11 pm, he almost ignores it. Tess is in bed already, and he needs to hold her, but it only takes a minute at most to read a text, so he clicks on it, and within seconds is whooping out loud with relief.

The message itself is unsatisfactory. It does not say that Tommy's coming home, or where he is, or what made him go – just that he's okay, and Brendan should let Pop and Frank and Kelly know, and the phone will be off so don't keep trying to text him. While Brendan's reading this, another message comes through, _Love you bro_, and Brendan loses it. He can't stop the tears for a good ten, twelve minutes, and it's Tess who forwards the two messages to Kelly's phone, and who calls Paddy to tell him they've heard from Tommy.

The next two days he's on edge, hoping Tommy will contact him again. He goes into Tommy's room on Sunday afternoon and for the first time opens the footlocker Tommy left in his room, understanding all of a sudden that Tommy meant for him to take care of it. The only things left in it are things that used to belong to Mom: some photos, some cards the brothers made for her on Mother's Days past, and her rosary. Brendan takes the rosary, overcome with emotion at touching something his mother had cherished, and at knowing that Tommy's leaving this for him to find is an act of forgiveness and love. Tommy talks so often with actions instead of words, the fact that now he's done both to get a message to Brendan is an extravagance that tells Brendan how much he means those words, _love you bro_.

He prays the rosary for Tommy's safety and health, twice, working through the Hail Marys and Our Fathers with a heart full of love – and a desperate hope that the message of love wasn't a suicide note of some kind.

Monday afternoon, toward the end of the weight room session, somebody's playing their iPod through speakers. Brendan doesn't listen to this kind of thing most of the time, but a line of lyrics catches at his ears:

_I'm trying not to wonder where you are._

He keeps listening, and the lines immediately following wrench even further at his heart:

_All this time lingers, undefined.  
Someone choose who's left and who's leaving._

He has to sit down and put his head in his hands, captured by a storm of love and grief. Some of the kids come over and stand next to him. "Mr. C? Coach? You okay, Coach?"

He raises his head. He doesn't want to tell Tommy's story, because Tommy's always been so private about it, but what he says to his wrestlers is this: "Anybody here got brothers? Or sisters, or some of each?" Nods and raised hands. "You hang on to 'em. Support them. Help 'em out all you can, however you can, because even though you might fight with them now, there will come a time when you will need each other. Family is important, guys." He stands up. "It's five till. Let's knock off for the day, okay? No evening run. I'll see you all here tomorrow." He doesn't answer any of the clamor of questions, just waits for the boys to pack up and move out to the parents' cars waiting in the parking lot.

But he taps Jared's arm as Jared's shoving his iPod into his sports bag, and asks what song they'd been listening to. "The Weakerthans," Jared says. "It's called 'Left and Leaving.' It's actually my sister's iPod and she likes that indie acoustic guitar stuff, but we accidentally switched our iPods last night. I knew I should have gotten the black one instead of blue like hers."

"Right," Brendan says, and lets Jared go with a pat on the shoulder.

He goes home and finds the song on iTunes. Downloads it. Listens to it six times in a row, and lets the lyrics burn into his heart.

_I wait in 4/4 time,  
Count yellow highway lines that you're relying on to lead you home. _

It's Tuesday midmorning when Frank calls, sounding almost giddy with relief. "He's still in Philly," Frank says without preamble. "He walked into Russo's yesterday and worked out a deal with Lou Pallotta to clean the place in exchange for gym time."

Brendan nearly falls onto the sofa because suddenly his knees won't work. If Tommy's making deals, which Brendan knows he hates, at the very least he's planning for his life to go on happening.

"Lou's a good guy," Frank is going on. "Very sensible. Said he watched Tommy – who isn't giving his last name out, by the way – work out today, and he's taking it easy, just keeping the wheels greased. He's carrying his stuff around with him, and Lou says he looks tired but clean. Rational, no obvious drug use. And when I grilled Lou about his skin, he insisted that Tommy looked okay. I convinced Lou to start a testing program, ostensibly for controlled substances but he's gonna messenger Tommy's stuff over to Dr. Fowler for CK testing as well."

"I'm gonna go pick him up," Brendan says, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

"No, Brendan," Frank says very firmly. "No. You can't treat him like a little kid. If you go get him, he won't come home with you. Or if he does, he'll take off again. He needs to come to an understanding that he needs help and there's no shame in getting it, and you cannot rescue him like he's a little boy, his ego's taken enough of a pounding already."

It is true that one of the things that had consistently enraged Tommy as a kid was humiliation. Belittle him, talk smack, or sneer, and you'd better have your fists ready, as numerous neighborhood kids had found out firsthand. Tommy never bothered to talk smack back, he just waited for his chance and came in swinging. "Maybe you're right," Brendan says to Frank.

"I think so," Frank says. "I've been wrong about him a lot, but this time I think what you have to do is let him find his way. He has to grow up sometime and stop running."

Brendan nods, forgetting that Frank can't see him. Kelly's been saying this too. He sighs. "Yeah. Okay. I don't know if I have that much patience, but okay."

"You do," Frank says, and his voice is warm. "You do, brother."

**A/N: I _know_. I know, it is unbelievably cheesy to quote song lyrics in a fic. I don't even have the excuse of being a teenager. **

**But I ran across this song for the second time not long after I saw the movie, and I couldn't stop thinking about poor Brendan, standing there on the curb watching his mom and his brother drive away, not knowing he'd never see one of them again or that it would take many years and much pain before he would get to hug the other one. And that in some ways, Tommy is still stuck being a 14-year-old boy – he left Pittsburgh, but emotionally speaking he was the one who got left behind. Aaaargh. You see what I mean. Go check out the lyrics if you don't know the song; it'll break your heart too.**

**But fear not, Tommy will return. This whole long fic is a story about finding home, remember? We just have to be patient and wait with Brendan.  
**


	36. Chapter 36: Caught in an Eddy

**Ch 36 Caught by an Eddy**

**As always, I make no claim to own anything except my own characters.**

Tommy can't _forget_ her, of course he can't. He never will. But with that letter written he can put her out of his mind now. No more staying up nights thinking about her, no more running the soundtrack of her voice for the comfort of it. He's let her go. It's done.

She'll be better off.

He tells himself this twenty times a day, and by the fourth day it's easier to believe, even if it still hurts.

So he focuses on training. It takes almost as much attention to not overdo it as it had taken to run two hours nonstop, so that's good. He minds his diet as much as is possible to do living in the druggie motel, and he's got Rosa from the Stark Street Diner on his side now, and Charlie the cook there knows what he needs so he's getting his fruits and veggies in now too.

He watches the guys at the gym. Pedro's not bad. They can't really spar for practice; Pedro's a lightweight and Tommy's got thirty pounds on him so it's not safe. And there's Logan the heavyweight, who's got a good forty-plus pounds on Tommy, so he can't spar with Logan either. But they're both decent guys. Lou's a lot like Pop, and he's easy to work with. Easier, maybe, because he throws a kind word Tommy's way every now and then.

When Lou started the drug testing stuff he'd had to go into Lou's office and confess to the Percocet he'd taken the week before. "You got a 'scrip?" Lou had asked, and he'd shaken his head without explaining. "Well, lay off 'em. I don't wanna see the stuff show up in your bloodwork again." He'd nodded. Yeah, he shouldn't be taking them and he knows it. To be honest, he's a little surprised he'd been able to stop at one. "Want me to keep it for ya?" Lou asks.

He thinks about it. "Yeah. I'll bring it to you later. And thank you."

Lou gets up from his chair and puts his meaty hand on Tommy's shoulder. "Look. You ain't ever told me your real name. But I know what it is. And you can count on me and Steve to keep a secret, okay?"

More pockets of nice in a sucky world. "Thanks. Anybody else know?"

"Pretty sure Pedro recognized you, and so did Jen. You know Jen? One a Steve's girls?"

"I don't remember which is which," Tommy had confessed.

"The good one."

"Oh. Yeah." That one he had noticed; she's bold and confident and comfortable in the ring. Very professional, head and shoulders above the rest of them.

"They won't say anything," Lou tells him, and he nods. Goes back to work. Later he hands the baggie of Percs to Lou in the office, and Lou locks them away, but not before giving Tommy a hard level look like a warning. For some reason, having that boundary makes him feel safer. Like now he can't slip away too far; Lou won't let him.

And even better, Lou's arranged a couple of fights for him. Still using the Finnegan name since he's used that before, so that ought to be okay, and at least one of them pays the winner so maybe he can score a little cash.

And it's good there, at Russo's. He has time between drills to watch some of the other fighters training – Lou keeps him taking it easy, almost like he already knows Tommy shouldn't push it too far too fast – and see where their form breaks down or where they're missing something they should be doing. He learns everybody's names and figures out their places in the pecking order. Jen's good already. Clarice, the black girl, could be really good. She's got the athleticism, but she's impulsive. However, Clarice is probably the one person he doesn't want to talk to too much; she's too obvious about calling him sexy and he doesn't need that kind of crap. So he talks to Steve instead and tells him what he's noticed, and a couple of days later he hears Steve reiterating to Clarice that she's got to think moves through before making them.

Tommy's never thought much about women fighting before. But in general terms it presents an interesting puzzle. How do you, with limited force, but great stamina and greater than usual flexibility, subdue an opponent? Not to mention that lower center of gravity. He winds up spending a lot of time thinking about it. At some point he starts thinking about Brendan, about Brendan's fighting style, and he becomes more and more convinced that these girls could benefit from watching Brendan fight.

God. _Brendan_. He can't bear to think too long about Brendan, how hurt he is. How worried. He can't stand to think about how much he misses his brother, so he doesn't let himself do it.

Thing is, when he is thinking about the girls watching Brendan fight, he remains convinced that Tess would rather hogtie her husband to the back deck than let him enter a cage again. And while he's thinking about Tess, he's surprised to realize that he actually misses her. She's so steady. She's always got the long view. And it's only now that he's not living in her house that he sees all the ways she made him comfortable without making a big deal about it. And even if she hadn't been welcoming to him, he'd still have to admit that she sure is crazy about his brother.

He misses the girls too. Misses their giggling, the feel of their little hands on his face, and the way they'd cuddle into his shoulder while he read out loud to them. Misses the way they were happy to see him. And sometimes he wonders if Kelly might have been right – since Rosie and Emily trust him like that, maybe he's not such a fuckup as he thinks.

The motel sucks worse every day. There's nothing else cheaper that he knows of; there are probably any number of single rooms for rent all over the city, but he doesn't feel like chasing them down, even if he knew where to start. He might have to start, though, because the drug activity is getting louder at night, and the sirens and the screams are getting to be a steady thing from dark till dawn. He can't sleep.

Other than his sleeping arrangements, things are going pretty well and he's started to dare to think about Sparta III again when there's the minor disaster of the electrical wires at the gym. He manages not to spout off a long string of curses, but now what's he gonna do with his time? Back to the library, he guesses. It's only one day.

Except that it gets worse: now it's two, maybe with more to come.

And then that girl Jen offers him her couch – after telling him she knows what it's like to carry your stuff around with you everywhere you go. The last person to see down into his inner self like that... well, he'd fallen for Kelly, of course. And Jen's not _quite _right, it's not so much the not having a place where you belong as it is not belonging in the place where you should belong. Or something like that. It's fuzzy even to him. But still. It's yet another pocket of decency in a world that hasn't shown him a lot of good things.

So he says yes. Just till he settles in and gets his own place, he tells her, and she nods all unconcerned. Of course. And he'll chip in on the rent. That one she starts to argue, but he insists, and she finally agrees.

If it had been Clarice, he'd have turned her down without a second thought. If it had been any of the other girls, he'd have said no too. But Jen's a serious fighter, and he doesn't think she's trying anything sneaky with this. She's just being nice. He's pretty sure.

It's a brief but awkward trip to her place, what with him behind her on the motorcycle. Her place clearly used to be a warehouse. The apartment building looks like it had been meant to be one of those fancy, high-rent upwardly-mobile urban loft-apartment developments, but then maybe the housing downturn intervened and the building owners had dropped their prices just to get some tenants paying rent. In short, it looks way better than it ought to be for what it's costing Jen. It's four floors, and each floor has either two smaller apartments and one larger one, or one small apartment and a really big one.

She's on the second floor, and it's mostly open space inside; the only interior walls enclose the bedroom and the bathroom. Big windows, covered with curtains so it's dim inside. He can imagine it gets pretty hot in the summer if you just let the sun stream in, but in the winter it would be really pleasant to grab all the rays you can. The kitchen's small but the appliances are nice and there's an island to prep food on (funny how he never noticed that kind of thing before he started watching Tess make dinner every night). He tells her he's got a budget to chip in on food, and she says it's fine, they'll work that out somehow.

No carpet either, there's some kind of wood floor with a rug or two. Not the old-fashioned kind of plank floor he's used to. He asks, and she says it's bamboo. _(They make floors out of bamboo?) _She shows him the bathroom and says it will be easy for her to remember if he uses the plain blue towels while she sticks with the blue and white stripes. No problem.

She tells him about the outer door key, the buzzer system, and her apartment key. Fixes him with a gimlet eye before telling him she's going to trust him with her spare keys, and if he abuses the privilege she'll tell Lou. The idea of an angry Lou coming at him just makes him laugh.

And she looks surprised. "First time I've seen you laugh in two weeks, Tommy Riordan," she says.

Ah. She does know who he is. "Did Lou tell you?" he wants to know. "And really it's Conlon. Riordan was my mom's name. I just used it for awhile."

"No, Lou never said. But I knew who you were when you walked in," she says.

"Damn, I knew that hoodie was a bad idea," he mutters to himself.

"No, it was your face. Of course, I had watched some video of the first Sparta not long ago so it was sort of fresh in my mind. And I saw you at the Sunday Slammer, too – I kept looking at you trying to figure out why you looked so familiar." Jen looks very pleased with herself. "I didn't tell anybody. Figured if you wanted to be undercover you wouldn't appreciate it."

Well, there went Frank's theory that he wouldn't be recognized. He shrugs a little. Says thanks.

"You want a shower or anything?" she asks. "Or laundry opportunities?"

"Yeah, laundry would be good. In the basement, right? I can probably find that myself." She nods and hands over her detergent, remarking that he can just buy the next one, and he says fine.

In the laundry room there's a shortish guy with curly blond hair eyeing him sort of suspiciously, so Tommy says hi. "You just move in?" the blond guy asks, crossing his arms.

"I'm staying with Jen for awhile," Tommy says. "You know Jen? On the second floor?" It occurs to him that he doesn't even know Jen's last name – oh. Yes, he does. The nameplate on the apartment door says Peretti; he'd noticed it without realizing.

"Yeah, she's my neighbor," the guy says. "My name's Cole. I share that big apartment next door to her with two other guys. We, um, kinda look after her. Make sure she's safe and stuff." Tommy manages not to find this funny. Cole might be 5'6" on a tall day, and he looks pretty fit, but he obviously has a desk job and is probably no good in a fight. But three determined guys, that's something else. Actually, there's something about him that sets up a minor alert in Tommy's mental recon center. He's not sure what.

"Good for you," he says. "I'm Tommy. Plannin' to get my own place soon, but she was nice enough to let me crash until I do." However, the explanation just makes Cole look even more suspiciously at him. Well, he can't help that. He turns to the table up against the wall and dumps his dirty laundry out on it so he can sort it.

Cole wants to know how Tommy met Jen, so Tommy tells him. And while Cole's listening, backed up to a washing machine with his arms folded, Jen comes in and says hi to him. "Hey, you just meet Tommy?"

Cole quirks one eyebrow up, which is sort of annoying because Tommy's pretty sure he can't do that. "Yep. So you two just met a couple of weeks ago?"

"My apartment, my rules," Jen says in a warning sort of voice. "Don't give me shit about it, Cole."

"Well, you just remember not to blame me if your apartment gets burgled and you get attacked in the middle of the night," Cole says. _Jesus_. Tommy's about to get really pissed off before it occurs to him that it's not so much an anti-Tommy thing to say as it is a support-Jen deal. Which is okay. Women have it tough enough, they need all the friends they can get.

Jen rolls her eyes. "Is Dagan home?" Cole nods, and rolls his eyes too. "What, are you guys fighting again?" Jen asks.

_Ohh. Dude's gay. And what the hell kinda name is Dagan?_

"No, but he's being a tool as usual. Bringing dates home and waking everybody up. It'd be one thing if it was the same person every time, but it's not. Of course he's asleep right now, he was up half the night."

While those two are discussing the guy with the weird name and his man-whore habits, Tommy tosses tees and boxers and socks into one washer and starts it, then athletic shorts and trackies into another one and starts that one. That's the end of his roll of quarters, and he'll have to get some more out of his bag for the dryer. For the first time he realizes he won't have to go eat at the diner and he won't see Rosa and Charlie for awhile, unless he goes by on purpose. Which he should. Rosa will be sorry if he just stops showing up.

And that thought makes him think of Brendan. _Shit._ He's suddenly feeling so awful about walking out on Brendan that he feels that old urge to be somewhere else,right now. He walks out of the laundry room and starts to go up the stairs when he thinks, _oh yeah, I don't have a key_. So he leans on the wall and thinks about texting Brendan again. He should. It would be good to do that.

Maybe he should call instead.

He's still standing there wondering what Brendan's doing on a Thursday afternoon and if he'll even answer his cell if Tommy calls, when Jen and Cole come out of the laundry room. Cole still looks suspicious. They all go upstairs, Jen explaining that there is an elevator but she usually uses the stairs instead, and Tommy agrees, it's probably better to walk. He's distracted, though, and when they get up to the second floor he asks Jen if she minds his plugging in his cell phone.

"No problem," she says again. "Go right ahead." And then she gives Cole a sidelong look while she continues speaking to Tommy. "Use any electricity you want, within reason."

"Well, I'll probably ask anyway," Tommy says. He knows, from living in places he doesn't own, that you always ask.

Jen gives him her spare key and prints him a bus schedule so he can get around, and after the laundry's done he goes to get some groceries, stocking up on lean proteins and plenty of fresh produce, and oatmeal. He's not going to miss the diner, except for Rosa.

Jen makes dinner – some Italian thing with swordfish, and it's awesome – and then she sort of drags him next door to meet her other neighbors, hang out, get to know them. "Just so they don't jump you in the elevator with a switchblade or something," she jokes.

Cole and Dagan are definitely gay, and definitely into each other, judging by the way they're throwing these little jealous insults at each other over their cocktails. Also judging by the cocktails themselves (cranberry cosmopolitans, whatever _those_ are). It's all he can do to not roll his eyes. If listening to women talk is like watching a National Geographic documentary on, say, a lemur colony, watching these two gay guys hang out is like watching aliens communicate. He's starting to get jumpy after about fifteen minutes.

And then their third roommate walks in, wearing gym rat uniform and carrying a gym bag as well as Thai carryout. The first thing the guy (who's sporting some nice bicep development) says is, "Please _God_, tell me there's still some Rolling Rock in the fridge, because I'm not drinking _that_ crap," and Tommy starts breathing normally again. He'd bet his best gloves that this guy is straight, and maybe someone he could be comfortable around.

Unfortunately, from the minute that Jen introduces Tommy, the guy starts burning holes in him with his eyes. He might have a floofy sort of name (seriously, what kind of parents name their kid Grey?) and he might be sharing an apartment with school friends who happen to be queer, but he's not. No, Grey the lab tech gym rat has the hots for _Jen_, and apparently she has no clue.

Tommy skips out at this point, claiming that he's got to make a phone call. He turns on his cell phone and scrolls through the index of text messages: Brendan, Pop, Brendan, Tess, Frank, some number he doesn't know, Brendan, Pop, Frank, Kelly, Frank, and Brendan. He's tempted to read them, especially Kelly's, but not now. He goes down to the street and calls Brendan, who picks up on the second ring.

"Tommy! My God, where are you?"

"Um... staying with a friend. Listen, you okay?"

"Am _I _okay? Jesus, man, I'm worried sick about you and you ask me if_ I'm _okay? Shit, Tommy."

He sighs. "I'm good. Really, I feel good, no more of whatever that medical shit was. And I'm sorry about everything. Takin' off like that. It's just... I got some stuff to deal with and I need to do it on my own."

"Where are you? Please come home," Brendan says, and the sound of his voice is just killing Tommy, all that pain in it. Shit, shit, shit. He is such an asshole to do this to Brendan.

His own voice is a little scratchy now. "I just can't be there right now. This girl is letting me crash at her place for awhile, and I will let you know how things are going, okay?"

"What's her name?"

"It's Jen. Stop worrying, man."

"Tommy, please – "

He interrupts Brendan because this is getting really hard. "Look, I might have a fight soon. Will you come if I give you the details?"

"'Course I will, you know I will. But when?"

"Couple of weeks. Look, man, I gotta go. I'm turnin' the cell back off, so quit texting me, okay? I'll call you."

"Tommy. Don't hang up."

"Tell Pop I'm fine. I love you, man." And he does hang up, feeling like a jerk but not as bad of one as he'd felt before. Brendan, at least, wants him to come back.

It takes him awhile to go to sleep on Jen's fold-out couch bed. It's nice here, but he's not used to the smell of it yet. Funny how that didn't matter in the Druggie Motel, but this is somebody's living space, and it does matter. It's not that it smells bad, just.. strange. Some houses you walk in and you notice the smell right away, like Kelly's house smelling like lemon oil and ginger tea and her perfume. Some houses you don't notice right away, and then when you do notice, it's comfortable, like Tess and Brendan's house smelling like clean laundry and coffee and whatever it is Brendan smells like, which he couldn't describe but could recognize probably anywhere in the world.

It takes him awhile to settle in to staying at Jen's, of course, and he doesn't want to settle too deep. It's temporary. It's an eddy in the stream carrying him away from the past. But he does settle enough to function. He sleeps, he eats, he showers and does laundry and cleans up some since Jen is not much of a housekeeper.

He gets to know the guys next door and starts relaxing a little as he figures out Cole and Dagan are just people. He can't predict how they'll react to stuff, true, but Dagan likes goofy jokes and Cole calls Jen "Big Sis," so from that he extrapolates that they're human beings at least, even if they do wear pink oxford shirts (Cole) and kiss other guys goodbye at the front door (Dagan, clearly to make Cole jealous).

Grey still eyes him with deep suspicion and dislike. It's probably worse because the guy seems to take every chance he gets to make some sort of witty joke. Jen laughs and Tommy doesn't get it, and Grey smirks. He has this long curly hair which should look girly but somehow instead looks like a lion's mane; it's wild surfer-dude hair that goes with the tan and the pecs and the tank tops Grey wears when he's not at work. (At work? It's button-down shirts and khakis and a very neat ponytail.) It's only when Tommy reveals some baseball knowledge and his complete surprise at the Pirates having the best MLB record at the All-Star break that Grey even bothers to speak directly to him, and then they argue Pirates-Phillies for awhile and that feels normal.

He and Jen actually start some kind of routine, as to who cooks when and what he can clean up around the apartment while she's at work. She tries not to wake him up when she comes in from her shift at The Palomino, and he tries not to wake her up when he gets up early to run. Sometimes he makes enough breakfast for her and leaves it in the fridge for her; sometimes she makes enough dinner for the both of them. It's pretty cozy. He likes it here in the middle of town, with city traffic all around and the lights of the business district coming on at night.

He stops by Stark Street sometimes to say hi to Rosa and check in with her. Sometimes he talks a little, has a cup of decaf, leaves her a fiver under the saucer just because.

It's not home. It's not even remotely home, and Jen is a friend but she doesn't feel like a place where his heart can rest either. But it's good. And he can feel himself gathering his strength – physically and otherwise.

Once day Tommy and Grey run into each other in the basement laundry room, where Tommy dumps all his gym clothes into the washer while Grey is folding lab coats. "God, you have to have multiple lab coats?" Tommy asks in surprise, and Grey actually laughs.

"They get stuff on 'em," he explains. "Blood. Sometimes other stuff, but it's usually blood since that's what I spend most of my time testing. I have to bleach these things."

Tommy gets a sudden memory flash of his MCCUUs after the bombing, splashed with blood and other body tissues; it was only wading into the water to get the door off the Amtrac that had cleaned it to bearable, and he'd ditched that uniform as soon as he could. It had Faw's blood on it, and Fleischman's, and oh-_God_ Manny's blood...

He comes back to himself with Grey's hand hard on his forearm, and he's sweating even though it's cool in the basement. "You okay, man?" Grey asks him, and he nods – first uncertainly and then more sure. Yeah, he's okay now. He's sure of where he is. "Iraq or Afghanistan?" Tommy blinks in surprise, and Grey explains. "My cousin Dawson's in the Army. Deployed twice to Afghanistan, and he's okay but he's lost friends to IEDs. He gets that faraway look too. And I can't talk about my work around him. He says – well, never mind. If you've been there, you know."

_Hell, yeah, I know. _"Iraq," Tommy says. "And I don't talk about it."

Grey just nods, and folds the last lab coat. "Hang in there, Tom," he says as he leaves.

_As hard as I can_, Tommy thinks to himself.

Funny, he hasn't been able to say even this much about himself to Jen. Maybe because she already knows who he is and, he assumes, saw all the "war hero" shit on TV, maybe because he just doesn't want to get into it. She's had her own problems, he can see that. She's alone and the only people who care about her are her stripper friend Amber, and her neighbors and the guys down at Russo's. Which is creditable, really, that there might be more people interested in her welfare than he's got interested in his.

One night he can't stand it; he's alone in the apartment while Jen's bartending and he flips on his cell to check his messages. He leaves the voice mailbox, which is full, alone, because he can't stand to hear anybody's voice, but he opens the texts. They're much the same as he would have expected, mostly Brendan and Tess begging him to come home, referencing Pop and the girls and Frank (oh Jesus, Frank, he still doesn't want to deal with how violent he got with Frank). He doesn't read Frank's texts. But that one from Kelly, and there is still only one... that one he has to read.

It's disappointingly polite and reserved, which Kelly is definitely not. For a moment he wonders if there was anything sweeter and more tender in those earlier text messages, the ones he deleted without even looking at them. She says:

_Please take care of yourself. You don't know how much the people in your life miss you. I pray for you every day._

Great, she's fucking "praying for him." If that isn't the most useless thing she could possibly do he doesn't know what is.


	37. Chapter 37: Used to the Pain

**Chapter 37: Used to the Pain**

**As always, I claim only my own characters.**

The day after the Sunday Slammer Kelly wakes up alone in her bed, foggy-headed and deliciously achy in sensitive places. But just like she was on Friday, she's running late and only the fact that she won't have to take the boys anywhere is going to help her get to work on time. She showers in record time, leaves her hair gelled and wet, tosses on some pink scrubs, and dashes out the door. Breakfast is McDonald's coffee again, along with a couple of breakfast burritos, and she's going to have to buy lunch because she didn't make it.

And of course Janine pounces when she walks in (two minutes late) and wants to know, "_Who_ was that gorgeous guy you were having dinner with on Saturday night?"

"Oh, you met him – his name is Tommy. He's the brother-in-law of the friend who's keeping the boys this summer." Even saying this much gives her a secret shiver because she's talking about him.

"My God, I might even leave _Chris_ for a guy with those lips. Please tell me he is an astounding kisser," Janine whispers.

"I don't blame you," she tells Janine. "And yeah. Astounding. Now don't ask me any more, Janine, I'm late."

Blessedly, Janine goes off to do her own patient charts, and Kelly just has to make her way through the day. She's still a little ragged from that long excruciating flashback, and all the lovemaking since Thursday night has left her sore, but she still holds that close like a secret delight. She puts Tommy out of her mind until lunch time, when she sends him a text that she's sorry they couldn't wake up together this morning and she hopes to see him later.

The boys are back at Tess' by now after their Father's Day weekend with Mike, and Tess reports that they seem fine. No bumps, bangs, nicks, scratches, or dings, and they're in good spirits. Thank God.

Kelly doesn't know how they're going to work this, she and Tommy... will he come over late and leave early? Will he only spend the night when the boys are gone? They will have to talk it over later. No scenario she can come up with is ideal or even good, but there's no way she's giving him up now.

Tommy doesn't call. Or text. And when she goes to get the boys, Tess tells her he came home early from the gym and went straight to bed, which is worrisome. And later, after dinner, when she still hasn't heard from him, she calls Tess instead. Tess reports he's really sick, and it's only close to midnight that he does call and they have a brief conversation.

She doesn't know that it's going to be the last time she'll hear his voice for nearly a month.

Tuesday she fully expects that if he's feeling awful she might not hear from him, and she'll just trust Tess to look out for that. He's not there when she drops off the boys, and Tess says she hasn't seen him at all but his room is empty. So Kelly sends another text message at lunch, trying to stay calm about him and wishing he'd tell her what's going on medically so she can point him in the direction of appropriate care.

But nothing. No reply, and his phone seems to be off when she calls.

And when she comes to pick up the boys at six-thirty, after going to the gym, the house is in an uproar. Brendan is pacing, Tess is on the phone, the kids are being horrible because of all the adult distress, and there's a note lying on the kitchen island. She reads it.

Her first, irrelevant, thought is that this is the first time she's ever seen his handwriting, which is obviously rushed but clear all the same, with heavy pressure on the downstrokes. Her second thought is that she's feared this all along. And her third? _It's my fault._ She's horrified, and terribly worried about him, and crushed.

It's hell without him, because there is absolutely nothing for her to do to help. And because she knows he's in pain, and that doesn't even cover how _she_ feels, as raw as if she's lost the top layer of her skin. She tries not to feel abandoned, but she feels it anyway.

She does call him, even when Tess and Brendan report that he's not answering his phone at all. The first time she calls, she's urgent but calm, saying that everyone is worried and she hopes he can find some medical help. The second time she's much less in control of herself, and she can't help the way her voice shakes when she pleads for him to come home because she misses him, she misses him _so much_. The third time she's crying, and all she can say is, "Tommy, please. I'm dying without you. Please." She texts too, horrible run-on messages full of typos and no punctuation, full of wailing and demands, like this: _WHERRE R YOU desperate worried please pls callme pls pls pls._

All week, Tess is distracted - when she's not doing something active with the kids, she's on the phone, pacing. She's feeding the kids sandwiches (which is fine, it's hot) and fruit and says she can't settle to cooking anything, so Kelly cooks instead, since she's hardly sleeping. She makes chicken casserole and pot roast with vegetables and lasagne and spinach salad with watermelon chunks and shaved roast beef. She bakes rolls in complicated shapes, just for the mental exercise of it. She wants to bake brownies but can't bear to, remembering how Tommy loves them. When she's done cooking, she cleans things. Top to bottom, front to back, inside out.

She does not confess to Tess or to Brendan the part she might have played in the whole mess. She feels guilty about that, but she's so wrecked herself and she just doesn't think it's going to help, and if he does come back then she wants Tommy to be the one to make it public, if he wants. And if he doesn't want – well, then, the fewer people who know, the less painful and humiliating it is.

She ducks Janine all week. On Friday she asks one of the doctors in the office for a referral to a licensed counselor. She is tired, _sick and tired_, of these stupid flashbacks and fears and being so messed up in the head. It's not that she thinks Tommy's coming back if she gets herself sorted out (though she is desperately hoping he gets some counseling himself); it's that she wants to do it. Before, she'd gotten an anxiety prescription and a couple of introductory therapy sessions, and she'd just kept her head down and tried to get through the aftermath of leaving her husband. But now she wants to get a better handle on herself, a better way of looking at her own pain. Because everything hurts so much right now that she can't even process it. She makes an appointment for Monday evening, and calls Tamera to babysit.

Monday morning next, after the weekend she spent doing every single chore she could think of to keep her mind off things (cleaning out closets she's neglected since she moved in, shining up the washer and dryer, organizing the cereal shelf, polishing all her shoes, mows the grass), she comes inside when she drops the boys off and asks as she has every morning, "No news, I guess?"

But Tess says, "Oh, honey – I meant to call you last night! Tommy sent Brendan a text message, and he's fine. Or he _says_ he's fine, anyway, and for us to stop texting him. And stop worrying, like we could even do that. I called Paddy while Brendan was getting himself under control, and then that turned into this huge phone conversation, and it was late and I just forgot. I'm sorry. He did say for us to tell you he's okay."

For just a minute Kelly is frozen to the floor. _He texted Brendan, but not me. He didn't text me_.

Then she sucks in some air and gets some perspective. He's _alive._ Thank God. She hugs Tess and extracts a promise that they'll call her right away with any new developments.

The first counseling visit goes well. It's slightly embarrassing and awkward, and she hates confessing to people that her husband hit her, but her therapist, Dr. Lessinger, is a nice blend of warm and reserved, and she likes the woman. They set up twice-weekly appointments for the next few weeks, and Kelly is supposed to be journaling her feelings this week.

That's hard. Not that she minds keeping track of her feelings or even sharing them, but that so often, her feelings don't even matter to her everyday life. She might be a wreck, but there are still meals to cook and groceries to buy. There's work and laundry and her sons' bathtimes and hugs and paying the bills, and while she can (and _has_, more than once,) balanced the checkbook through tears, sometimes she wishes she didn't have to keep functioning even when she's overwhelmed with emotions. She'd let them direct her life that one weekend with Tommy, and she can't afford to do it again.

Gah.

The counseling is helping. She's doing two hours a week in session, and thinking through things on her own a lot, and she actually feels strong enough to agree when Mike suggests they occasionally spend an afternoon, maybe once a month, doing something as a family. She makes it clear that she's not coming back to him, that this would _never_ be a precursor to their relationship being renewed, but he might be right about the boys needing to see them interact in calm, productive ways. Mike has been in therapy himself, and he deserves his second chance as much as she does. As much as Tommy does.

And then that letter shows up. She puts it away until after the boys go to bed, fearful of what it contains, and only when the house is quiet and mostly dark does she sit at the dining room table and open it. She can't bear to be sitting on her bed, or on the couch, the places where they'd taken each other with so much passion.

She looks it over: no return address. Her name and address handwritten very carefully on the front of the envelope, and she knows that handwriting now; it's as straightforward as he is (at least it's the way he is when he's not trying to hide something for his self-protection). Her hands are trembling as she opens it. One sheet of paper, and his physical competence is so easily seen in the neatness of the folds.

She skims it in phrases and chunks, getting more of it as her heart hammers faster and her hands get colder and her throat closes up with pain. It says words like, _I think_ _we rushed things... we should have been more careful... I'm sorry... I'm no good for you... it kills me that being with me is so hard for you... I will never forget you but you should forget about me... I hope you find some guy good enough for you... not sure a person like that exists but maybe there's a good guy somewhere... I will miss you... take care of yourself... take care of the boys, they need you... I have to find my way... _and then she can't even read the signature because her eyes are streaming tears. She refolds it and reinserts it into the envelope, and then she takes it upstairs and puts it at the very bottom of her sweater drawer where she won't accidentally run across it and wound herself, as if she's packing away a knife that you can't use without slicing your hand open.

Dr. Lessinger agrees that perhaps it would be best to try to put it behind her, to agree that they rushed things and that it would be best to feel her pain and then to try to realize that circumstances were against them. To forgive without blame. Kelly can't quite do that yet, but then she blames herself as much as she blames Tommy. She'd_ known _he was no babe in the woods, no innocent teenager without a painful history, and yet she'd made the decision to say yes because she'd wanted him.

The really sad part is that she still wants him, even now, even after everything.

One day when Tommy's been gone more than two weeks, she can't stand it and she leaves him another text message, this one about as reserved as she can manage. She_ wants_ very badly to wail and beg and demand and plead and insist and nag, but her pride won't let her, and her brain tells her it would be useless anyway. So she simply reminds him that he matters, and that she remembers him in her prayers every day.

Which she does. They're simple prayers, mostly, ones she prays with the boys when she tucks them in:_ God bless Nana and Fred. God bless Daddy. Thank you God for fire engines, the pool and ice cream, and don't forget food for the starving people in Haiti, God, and let Emily and Rosie's Uncle Tommy come home soon God. AhhhhhMEN. _ And then there are her own private prayers, which are wordless and desperate, and full of worried longing.

On Friday morning when she drops off the boys, Brendan happens to catch her before she leaves, and he tells her he's talked to Tommy. "He called last night," Brendan says, and there is a little flash of hope in his eyes for the first time. "He called and talked to me just for a few minutes, but it was really him, and he's in Philly – "

"He is?" Nobody has told Kelly this. Somehow it hurts more than she thinks it would if he'd gone back to Pittsburgh, or to San Diego or another place.

"Yeah, he's started training again at Russo's Gym downtown," Brendan says, and his forehead crinkles up. "Frank told me a couple of days ago. Frank's got feelers out all over the place, with the other trainers, you know? And the word is he seems to be doing okay. The medical problem, you know the elevated CK levels?"

"Yeah, I know," Kelly manages to say, with her throat closing up. _He's in town. He could see me anytime he wants, and he doesn't want to._

"They're back down almost to normal. He must have rested some and slowed down. Anyway, he says he's staying with a girlfriend and he's fine. We didn't talk long, but he sounded good. A little hoarse maybe but sometimes his voice just gets like that."

Brendan keeps talking but Kelly can't listen to any more. "Staying with a girlfriend" has hit her so hard she can't breathe for a minute. Could anything hurt her any worse? She interrupts Brendan mid-sentence and tells him she's got to go, she'll be late for work if she doesn't get going. They hug very briefly – he gives great warm brotherly hugs that never make her uncomfortable – and she gets in her car before the tears fall.

Halfway to work, she has to pull over because she's sobbing so hard she can't see.

But she perseveres. Tess and Brendan still don't know, _no_ one knows, and she can't stand the thought that her pain would be visible to everyone else, again. The radio is conspiring against her, playing breakup songs every hour. "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" kills her. Even when she switches to the oldies/alternative station they're playing Echo and the Bunnymen's "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want." The country station is worse in the number of breakup songs they play, but even though she's not much of a Tracy Lawrence fan she listens to his song "Used to the Pain" and identifies with the lyrics:

_...the truth is I really can't say if  
I'm getting better or just used to the pain._

It feels different than when she'd kicked Mike out and started divorce proceedings; she'd been hurt and angry and felt justified in her actions. It feels different than when she'd found out Mike was cheating on her. It's different from when her college boyfriend Jamie broke up with her because he was tired of her not sleeping with him, or when she and her other college boyfriend, Isaac, had decided that their different religions were too big an obstacle to a successful relationship.

This time, her heart literally feels broken, like it doesn't function properly, and she sometimes wonders if she should keep doing Zumba or running or working out on the elliptical, if her heart might stop suddenly while she's exercising. There's actually been a scientific study done that indicates an emotional shock, like a serious breakup or the death of a child, significantly increases the risk of a heart attack or death from illness. And then she figures that if her heart's broken, she needs to take care of it all the more, and she keeps exercising.

She sets up a Facebook account and starts connecting with old friends from high school and college. Somehow she manages to find Missy Craft, her best friend from fifth grade, who left John Burton High School in Norton and went to Lynchburg College on a full-ride scholarship, and now is a CPA in Richmond. They chat. It's fun. It's a distraction from her heartache.

Three mornings a week she wakes up on a wet pillow. But as two weeks stretch into three, and then into four, the tears come less often, or less agonizingly. Or maybe she's just gotten used to the pain.

_A/N: By the way, that study about broken hearts being a complication for medical issues is the real deal. Serious science, no kidding._


	38. Chapter 38: Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

**Ch 38 Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien**

**Couple of POV switches in this one. Sorry. It's just the way it worked out – so anyway, you might want to read carefully and pay attention to whose brain we're in.**

By Jen's lights, it's working out just fine with Tommy.

He doesn't have a job other than training, which _would _be a problem except that he does chip in for rent and groceries. Also that she can tell how much better she's gotten just in the last week or so, with him pushing her on her conditioning. He'll run past her, yelling, "C'mon, Jen, you got more in you!" and she'll keep going a little longer, a little faster than she'd thought she could. Or he'll tell her she can do three more minutes on the speed bag, and then three more, and only when her arms are about to drop off will he nod and say, "Good job." And just watching him spar is like getting a seminar on fighting moves. It's like she's got an extra personal trainer besides Steve, and it's pretty awesome.

She gets a lot of out just hanging with him, watching him deal with his own nightmares and his own urge to quit when he's tired, and whatever good stuff he's willing to give she's willing to take. There are times his demons surface, and he retreats far away to some place she can't reach, but he is a good guy even then, never blaming her for being unable to pull him out. He's never mean. Does stuff around the apartment without being asked. And he doesn't ask questions. He's just there when she needs him: a friendly shoulder, someone to share a meal or the chores or a TV movie with, someone to make the apartment seem less empty.

Not to mention that he is smokin' hot. Every time she walks into her apartment, she thinks that people should forget about thousand-dollar couches and fancy area rugs and gold-framed pictures on the wall, all they'd really need is a Tommy Conlon sitting shirtless on the gray pinstripe couch and classing up the joint. Because, just _damn_. He's so gorgeous, somebody ought to put a statue made from a mold of his body up on a pedestal at the art museum downtown. A naked statue would be best. Not that she's seen him completely naked, but you can pretty much see almost everything except the Business when a guy walks out of the bathroom wearing just a towel. And she'd bet the Business is just fiiiiiine.

He's not just a pretty set of traps-n-abs, though. They talk sometimes. Especially after her nightmare. She has one where she's dreaming that she was being taken right out of Nonna's arms again, Nonna crying and Jen screaming. He wakes her up, sitting on the side of the bed and patting her shoulder until she comes to her senses, handing her tissues to dry her tears.

She asks him to please sit with her for awhile with the light on, just so she can calm down enough to go back to sleep. He nods. Asks her, almost shyly, what it had been like to grow up in foster care.

She doesn't tell him all of it, not by a long shot – mostly because she doesn't want his pity. She doesn't even want her own. She survived, and that's something to be proud of. She tells him about the hand-me-down clothes that didn't fit, the houses where she couldn't count on being fed regularly, the places where she was expected to do all the housework before getting fed... that sort of thing. She doesn't tell him about the ways she usually felt forgotten and unwanted, unless there was a teenage boy in the house and she was wanted in all the wrong ways, but he's not dumb. She can tell he's reading between the lines and getting "fucked-up childhood," which for what it's worth is true.

She doesn't think about foster care much these days, she tells Tommy. Which is also true. She has a very firm policy of not remembering things that hurt. "I don't look back," she says. "I choose to forget. You know that Edith Piaf song? Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien?" He looks confused, shakes his head. (Of course, it might be her miserable French accent. She'd taken Spanish in high school.) "They used it in Inception," she prompts, "did you see that?"

"Um... yeah, I saw it. I didn't understand it, though."

"Oh. Well, anyway, that's sort of my theme song. The singer says she doesn't regret anything – nothing that she's done, nothing that's happened to her. She says she's going to build a bonfire with all the memories she's saved, because they don't mean anything. I don't remember my childhood because I don't want to. I feel better about it since I decided to forget."

He blinks twice, hard, and said, "Don't you want to remember your grandmother? I mean, she loved you, right? I don't think I'd want to forget my mom."

That's the bitch of the whole deal, forgetting Nonna. But if she forgets Nonna she doesn't have to remember the end. Doesn't have to remember how much it hurt to leave her. She tells Tommy that.

He furrows up his forehead and, finally, nods, saying, "I guess you're right. I guess it's a way to not hurt." And then he hands her two tissues and tucks the covers up around her. "Think you can sleep now?"

"Yeah, I think so," she says. He nods again, turning off the lamp instead of getting in bed with her as she'd half expected he might, and leaves the room.

O : O : O :

Staying with Jen is different than staying with Brendan, or with Pop. No kids, nobody to bother when you stay up late or get up early, he's free to do whatever he wants in the kitchen. Nobody really watches his comings and goings. But the best part of the deal is that nobody's feelings get hurt. He doesn't have to watch what he says or what topics he chooses, and there's no goddamn_ history_ to keep popping up and slicing people open with past hurts. He can say no to Jen without a second thought, and she'll just shrug.

Then, too, she's easy on the eyes. He has to admit that. He's never really had a "type" of girl he's usually attracted to – like only blondes, or only slender girls. That said, he is a total sucker for dimples and great tits, and Jen's definitely got those. She's very pretty, with a wide Sophia Loren mouth and big brown eyes, and you can't pinpoint her ethnic background except to say that she looks exotic.

Actually, okay, if he's being honest, Jen's damn hot. There is something sexy about a girl with tattoos who rides a motorcycle and tends bar and can throw an effective punch. There's also something easy and relaxed about being with her, too, because she likes sports on TV, and she likes beer and red meat, and there's not much girly about her at all. Like, her bedroom? It's all red and gray, with no frills whatsoever. And she doesn't own DVD copies of Bridget Jones' Diary or Wuthering Heights or whatever shit most girls seem to like – she likes action stuff like the Fast and Furious movies, and Quentin Tarantino.

She likes Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and Tool, hates Tommy's rap stuff, and cannot keep the towels in the linen closet folded to save her life – she pulls one out and leaves the stack to collapse. She's pretty messy around the apartment, too, and it's frustrating to come back there after a workout and find her shoes in the middle of the living room, her sleep shirt and underwear and wet towel on the bathroom floor. The laundry hamper's plenty big enough, but she seems to forget its existence. And as for the kitchen? She'll put dishes in the dishwasher and run it, but the sink and stove stay a mess, unless he cleans those.

She's a decent cook, though, specializing in salads and roast vegetables and sauteed meats, and she likes to sprinkle things with real bacon bits. Which Frank would probably kill him for eating, but it's awesome anyway. But in terms of food, he misses Brendan's grilled stuff, and he misses Tess' killer fruit oatmeal, and he misses Kelly's omelets.

He misses Kelly's _everything_, to tell the truth, so he tries not to dwell on her. He'd think that finally getting laid after a couple of years would make things calm down below the belt, but the opposite seems to be true. His brain keeps playing back those x-rated scenes that got burned into his memory, and it doesn't seem to care whether he's in public or asleep or what when it starts up the private screenings.

As a result, he's having to work harder to keep his eyes off Jen's ass. And Clarice's. And Alexa's, and Becka's, and the one on the blonde waitress at Nick's Cafe. Not to mention tits, it's like he's seeing those everywhere these days, from Jen's perky ones to Clarice's full firm ones, to Jen's friend Amber's big bouncy ones. Tits and ass all over the fucking place, and while in some ways it makes him think of Kelly, in other ways it kicks him back to the Corps. Because, as Manny used to say, "You get a buncha Marines together, and in our downtime we're either playing cards or Xbox, working out, or watching porn." Which is pretty much true.

To be honest, the porn that's stuck in his head is easier on his heart than the Kelly memories.

His new problem is that you can't jerk off in bed when sleeping on somebody else's couch. You_ just can't_. It's beyond rude, and the embarrassment factor is huge as well. He does give in to a quickie in the shower a time or two, but the idea that Jen would know what he's up to in there makes it hard to enjoy.

He nearly swallows his tongue when Jen's friend Amber confides that she met Jen when they were both exotic dancers at a local strip joint. He can see that, completely, because they're both really attractive... well, really fucking hot... and it's not like he's never tipped a stripper, either, but he's also never thought about strippers being people who existed outside the titty bar. It is sort of exciting there for a minute, and then he gets a flash of Kelly taking off that pink dress and his heart squeezes into this heavy lump, dense as lead, and somehow talking to hot strippers seems like selling out. Hot's good, sure, but he's not certain it's better than that string, connection, whatever, that thing that made him feel like he was part of Kelly. That ache to _belong_ to her, he'd never felt that before and it had been so overwhelming.

Plain old sex for its own sake was so much easier.

It might be a good thing for Jen that he's staying with her and chipping in on the rent, because in order to train harder, she's cut her hours back from 40-plus to about 30 a week, and she doesn't have that much income. He'd tell her that she needs a roommate, but there's only the one bedroom, so that kind of eliminates another girl, who would almost certainly want the same level of privacy.

Really, what she ought to do is shack up with a guy who can handle the rent so she can get her hours down under 20 and get serious about her training. But Tommy's not about to suggest that, it sounds too much like selling yourself.

But they wind up spending an hour or two over at Cole and Dagan and Grey's apartment next door a couple of times a week, watching sitcoms or movies or just talking. It's kind of nice. He's finally starting to warm up to Cole, who is a suspicious little bastard. Dagan's funny, though, and he's slowed down on the bringing-random-men-home deal so Tommy doesn't feel weird around him anymore. He'd probably like Grey if Grey would ever stop being a snotty son of a bitch, but the thing is that Grey seems really jealous of Tommy, not realizing that he and Jen are not living together for the usual reasons. He'd like to ask Jen if she has not yet figured this out, but it would probably be nosy, and he really doesn't want to piss her off.

(Actually, what Jen needs is for _Grey_ to move in with her. That would solve a lot of problems. Cole and Dagan should give up their three-bedroom for a two. Or maybe a one. But none of them seem to understand this.)

One Thursday night they head next door for some hang-out time and Dagan is all for watching Black Hawk Down, which he's streaming from Netflix, and trying to talk Cole into watching with them. "Come on, this is a great movie! Ensemble cast, action... great movie." When that gets nowhere, he resorts to, "Please, Cole?" And Cole, giving in, comes over and sits right beside Dagan on the couch. Grey rolls his eyes over Dagan's head at Tommy and Jen, and then he seems to register Tommy's expression.

Which is something like, _Holy fucking hell, no_. He wants to be able to sleep tonight. Just the idea of guys in uniform carrying machine guns is enough to give him the skeeves. "Think I'll skip it," he manages to say, and to go back to Jen's to change into some running gear. He's heading out when she comes in and asks where he's going.

"It's okay," he says. "I just need to run, go clear my head. Back in... I dunno, half an hour."

She shrugs and says, "Okay," looking nonplussed, before going back into the guys' apartment. For a good two minutes he stands still, trying to figure out how, if she'd understood the whole being-alone-with-no-home thing without his ever saying a word, _how _she could miss the fact that he can't watch military stuff. Not that he expected her to tell Dagan not to watch war movies, or that he expected her to decline to watch with the guys... but to at least know why he's not in there with them.

So he runs for forty minutes, thinking slow thoughts about the guys – he really ought to call Pilar, and he really ought to write to Mrs. Fleischman, whose first name he can't remember... Andrea? No, Karen – and keeping the memories focused on the good stuff. He deliberately remembers hanging out in a tent and playing HALO for hours at a time, with a cutthroat game of poker going on in one corner and porn on somebody's laptop with the sound turned way up so the guys could take bets on whether the girl would scream or just moan.

Great, porn in his head now. Well, better that than bombs and blood. He's getting better at deflecting flashbacks.

He goes back to Jen's and takes a shower, and it's only after he's dried off that he realizes he's left his underwear in his duffel bag. So he wraps the towel around his waist, just in case, and goes to get some clothes. It's a good thing he did that, because Jen is back in the apartment now. She tells him that Cole got creeped out by the gunshots and refused to watch any more of the movie, so they started watching DVR'ed episodes of Glee, and she can't stand that so she's back.

But all the time she's talking, she's sort of checking him out, discreetly, a glance at a time instead of one long stare. He can feel the heat in his ears as he grabs a shirt and boxers and shorts out of his bag and walks back to the bathroom. And then, of course, the heat moves quite a bit lower as he thinks about what she's probably thinking.

His old MO would have been to just go for it, just go and flirt a little, touch her arm or her shoulder, move in for a kiss, and let things happen from there. Sex for the sake of feeling good, there's nothing really wrong with that, is there? And Jen seems pretty interested. His brain says it wouldn't be a big deal, and his dick is _all for it_; it's only the lead lump in his chest that keeps him from making the decision to see how far he could push it.

Back in the bathroom, putting on clothes, his brain says that it's not cheating if you've already broken up with one girl before you fuck another one. But the heaviness in his chest – and God, yeah, it's like there's a fucking elephant sitting on him, a physical ache that makes it hard to breathe – says that it would be like trying to quench a raging thirst by eating Twinkies.

All the same, he breaks his no-jerking-off-on-the-couch rule that night. Handful of tissues ready, knee propped up and blanket over him. He ignores his dead-weight heart, and lets his brain roll film that could be from any of his sexual experiences before three months ago: a girl in the dark, clothes coming off, arms breasts waist hips legs, nipples tight under his tongue, the wet hot friction of a blow job, the even-better feeling of sliding inside the girl... halfway through, the anonymous girl turns into Jen and he just lets her stay in his head, lets it be her that he's slamming into, and makes sure to turn his head into the pillow to stifle the hiss of release.

Maybe sex with Jen would be okay, he thinks muzzily as he balls up the tissues, dry ones on the outside. So maybe it's not some big romance thing, but maybe they could be good together. Forget the past, like she was talking about.

_Maybe. Maybe._

O : O : O :

On Saturday night, when Tommy's been staying with Jen just over two weeks, they sit up and watch Rocky on late-night TV. Jen thinks to herself that it's nice, having someone in the apartment with her, somebody who doesn't give her any crap. He'd skipped out on Black Hawk Down the other night, and it had taken her awhile to figure out why, and then she'd felt stupid at how obvious it was and how badly she'd missed it.

They're eating raisins and dry Cheerios, and drinking skim milk, and every so often he flicks a raisin at her. Clearly it's just to be annoying, because every time he does it he gets this feral sort of grin on his face and pretends he didn't do it, and it's ridiculous but sort of fun.

She collects up all the raisins he's flicked at her, and saves them for the end of the movie, when she yanks at the neck of his tee-shirt and dumps them all down, and he cracks up laughing. He reaches over and pokes her in the side, making her yelp and giggle, and they get into a tickling contest which winds up with her sort of sitting on his lap and taking the initiative to kiss him, and after a moment he kisses her back. _Damn_, his lips are so soft and so kissable, really decadent, and she threads her hands into his hair and kisses deeper, with tongue this time. He's got one arm around her, and as she moves into the kissing a little more he pulls her closer. Tilts his head and leans into the kiss.

She leans to the side, letting her weight pull them over – and they're suddenly lying on the couch together, pressed close, and she can feel him against her thigh. It's been too long since she's had a man, because she doesn't want to wait now for is-this-okay and how-do-you-feel, all the awkward relationshippy things. She wants to be swept away. She just wants to move to another level; she wants the excitement. She knows there's a couple of condoms in the drawer of the side table near the couch; she left them there just in case. So she slides her hand down and along the hard length of him, hearing his intake of breath, and her own. _Oh, that's nice. All man there, like I knew he would be._

And then he breaks the kiss, grabs her wrist and moves her hand away. "No."

"_No?"_ she repeats, incredulously. He's clearly interested, why would he bail on sex? She pulls her head back to look at him.

"No, Jen." He doesn't sound mad, just firm.

"Why not?"

"Well, you're sort of my landlady."

"You know, it doesn't have to be some big romantic deal," she says, puzzled. "I mean, look, I'll be honest. I'm available. To you. I really like you. I think it could be good. It doesn't have to mean anything."

He sighs. Starts to say something, and then stops and shakes his head.

"Don't tell me you're not into this," she says. "Not with you packin' that kind of firepower. I'd know you were lying."

"Well, the equipment works okay," he says. "And I like you too. And you're pretty hot. But I just met you."

"Oh, come on," she says, getting sort of annoyed. "You're gonna tell me that you've never met a girl in a bar, and wound up taking her home and screwing her brains out all night? Of course you've done that. It's all over you." Of _course _he's done that. He's too gorgeous for it not to have happened.

He blinks. His voice has gotten very scratchy all of a sudden, the Pittsburgh accent really strong. "I used to do that a lot. And I've kinda thought about it, I mean being with you. Just for the sex." She just looks at him, trying to figure his deal, and finally he says something more. "I just... no. I don't want to be that kind of guy anymore. I'm not that kind of guy anymore."

In her experience, most guys _are_ that kind of guy. It's just the way they are. Jen might be an unusual girl in not needing the romantic mushy stuff every time, but guys are pretty much guys. "So what happened that you're 'not that kind of guy' now?"

"It's not you," he says. "It's not that there's anything wrong with you, okay? It's just that... once you've been with somebody and it _did_ mean something, you can't go back. I don't want to go back to it not meaning anything." He sighs again. "It would be like... like cheating on myself. Because sex like that, when it feels... when it breaks your heart like that? You don't wanna settle for less."

_Uh-huh. Had his heart broken_. "No, I get it," she says. "It's okay, I'm a big girl. I can take it." She can't help feeling a little bit rejected, because when has a guy ever shaken her off when she's said, _"Let's do it"_? That's an unqualified never. But his reasoning's respectful, at least, and it's not like he finds her completelyrepulsive (as evidenced by that impressive hard-on).

"I think we need to go to sleep now," he says, and nudges her away from his body a little.

"Separate beds, I suppose," she says, and she can't help sounding a little grouchy about it.

His voice is apologetic when he says, "Yeah." But apparently he's serious. She doesn't 'mean something' to him. _Well, shit._ But she gets off the couch and sighs, letting it go. When he stands up, the raisins fall out of his shirt, and they both laugh, lessening the tension like it really isn't a big thing.

While he's in the bathroom, she turns off the TV and pulls the hide-a-bed out of the sleeper sofa. She can do that much for him, even if he doesn't want her doing much more interesting things for him. _No, forget it_, she reminds herself. Nothing painful is worth remembering. It takes her awhile to fall asleep in her own bed, what with the sexual buzz in her veins and the anger she keeps pushing away. But finally sheer tiredness overwhelms her, and she drifts off.


	39. Chapter 39: Star City Grille, reprised

**Ch 39: Star City Grille, reprised**

**As always, I own only my own characters. And I must give props to WinterIsComing01 and Nik216 for their enormous help in getting this chapter right in characterization and angst level. Thank you tons, ladies.**

Sunday morning, Jen hears Tommy get up at five. She knows he'll eat two energy bars with chocolate milk, just like always, and run his seven miles, just like always, and come back to Jen's place for a hefty second breakfast, as he's done every day since he moved in. They talk a little over breakfast, not much, and she watches him to see if he's self-conscious about last night. There's a point at which his eyes meet hers over the table, and she asks him. The hell with being subtle about it, she just needs to _know._ "Look, let me just ask – are you totally opposed to the idea of sleeping in my bed with me sometime? For reals, if it was going to mean something?"

And he doesn't shut down exactly, but something behind his eyes goes wary. "If that's why you invited me to stay with you maybe I better find a new place soon."

"It's not. I wanted to help you out, that's all. But since you've been here... I dunno, I think we get along pretty good. I like you. I think it could maybe _start _to mean something."

He looks at his plate and pulls off another orange segment before eating it. He swallows before he answers her. "I'm not exactly... opposed. I just feel like... maybe there should be emotional stuff before that kind of thing." He's quiet a minute, looking out the kitchen window at the sky, which is already that pale nothing color that portends a hot, humid day. "Maybe sometime. I mean, we get along fine, and maybe sometime it would turn into something emotional."

"It's okay," she says. "I probably need a friend more anyway. And I can be patient." And this time he looks over and smiles. Cautiously, like he's not sure she's serious. She smiles back. The rest of the meal is eaten in silence, but not an awkward one. She asked, and he said no. _Again_. Okay. She's done with it.

After breakfast he hits the couch again, rolls over and goes back to sleep. When she hears him get up three hours later, she's putting some gel in her hair in front of the bedroom mirror after her own run and shower. She's dressed already: her favorite red twill shorts, a loose black sleeveless shirt that shows the muscles in her arms. Bronze gladiator sandals.

Right now she's really getting hungry. They usually eat at her place instead of eating out, because he's much stricter about his diet than she is. Sometimes he even cooks, though that's an exercise in unpredictability. His scrambled eggs are wonderful, his broiled chicken passable but boring, his vegetables a soggy mess. He makes this oatmeal thing with fruit and nuts that is totally to die for. But you can't ask him to slice bakery bread – you wind up with shavings too thin for sandwiches or blocks the size of doorstops; he just has no feel for a bread knife. Today she feels kind of down, like she needs something to cheer her up. So she sits on the arm of the couch and makes a rare request. "Let's go have lunch somewhere."

It takes him a moment or two to answer her, from his post-nap, delayed-response thing. "Okay. Where?"

She's been extremely good for the past two weeks, but it's Diet Cheat Day, and she really _needs_ it today, what with the denial of other appetites on her mind. She has a yen for a good cheeseburger, and maybe a beer. It's late enough, already past noon. "Star City Grille. I need a burger."

He makes a face. "Oh, not there. Nick's, instead? Or the Stark Street Diner?"

"Nick's will be too crowded and Stark Street is too far away. Come on, I'm starving. And I'll pay." She goes back into the bedroom and does her hair and face. She mostly leaves her hair alone because it looks best the way it just dries, crisp and curly, close to her head. Mascara, dark liner, Burt's Bees lip treatment, gold hoop earrings. She checks the mirror: yeah. She might not be Halle Berry, but she looks darn good for a Sunday lunch date.

She manages all this in the time that it takes him to go into the bathroom and change out of his running shorts into his gray cargo shorts. "Hurry up, lazy," she says, checking to see that she's got some money in her wallet and trying not to stare at how damn beautiful he is without a shirt. "I'm really hungry. And those burgers are so good. All that meat! And plenty of tomatoes and pickles."

"Fine." On his way out of the bathroom he tosses on a black tee with 'Pittsburgh Fight Club' on the upper left chest, and then he stops in the living room and puts on his Tevas. Shoves his own wallet into his pocket, rakes his fingers through his hair, and opens the door. "After you."

They walk the four blocks to Star City, and he says nothing, but at some point he reaches over and takes her hand. The July day is sizzling, sunlight bouncing back up from the dark streets, and she feels thin beads of perspiration gathering at her temples. She looks down at their feet in step on the sidewalk; his legs are getting tan but they're not nearly as dark as hers. Never will be, she bets; the genes are too definitively Irish. "What are you thinking about?" she asks him, suddenly, tired of the silence.

She's not prepared for his answer. "Church."

"_Church?_"

"Yeah. About now, my brother and his family are getting home from church. Probably my father too."

She looks up at the clock on the face of Redbridge Lutheran as they pass it: twenty to one. "I've never been inside a church in my life. I think it's time for lunch."

"Yeah." He says nothing more, and then they're inside the cool of the restaurant, making their way to the paneled wood bar. It's not crowded today, and there are plenty of seats available at the bar. Jen likes the bar area here, it's a lot more convenient than the regular table sections and you're closer to the excellent beer. They sit down, and she orders a bacon cheeseburger with fries. They've got locally-made Victory beer on tap here, so she asks for a Golden Monkey Triple. "I don't know how you can drink those weird brews," he says to her, almost laughing, and then he turns on the stool to look at the tables.

He is idly watching the crowd at the restaurant, apparently waiting for the bartender to come back with her beer and ask for his order – which will be, as usual, two grilled teriyaki chicken breasts, a baked potato, steamed veggies, and a giant salad, with water – when she sees the change in his face. His chin comes up and his eyes narrow, and he's got a pinpoint bead on something that interests him, the way a predator looks when it sees lunch on the hoof.

She turns to see what he's looking at. The restaurant's a little more than half full, mostly of couples and families. The table where he seems to be looking has four people sitting there – man, woman, two little boys. The man, sitting with his back to them, is tall, with long defined back muscles and a really great head of wavy light brown hair. The two boys are cute: the older one has blond hair and glasses and looks sweet, but the younger one, who looks like a handful of trouble in his red shirt, has darker hair that sticks out over one ear. The woman – who must be his mother – leans over to smooth the hair down, and she's smiling at him with so much affection that Jen herself feels the warmth of it. The woman leans the other way to say something to the other boy, still smiling, and Jen would like to laugh at her clothes, because she looks like a refugee from The Sound of Music, but she's pretty enough that she doesn't look completely stupid. Brown hair in waves on her shoulders, fair skin, thin silver chain around her neck. The dress she's wearing is light aqua cotton, with rows of tiny vertical tucks on the bodice, and a square low neck, trimmed in narrow white eyelet lace, that shows off the tops of her breasts. It's old-fashioned and girlish and not anything Jen would ever be caught dead in, but it is, Jen admits, very pretty.

The bartender, behind her, says something, and Tommy turns back to order. "I'll have what she's having, but with a Heineken instead of the draft." He's going to eat a _cheeseburger?_ Her confusion must show, because he says to her, defensively, "You went on so long about that burger that I decided I had to have one too."

"What about training?" she asks. It's like he's turned into one of those alien pod people who look the same but aren't the same inside at all, because he gives her this blank hostile stare before speaking again.

"Jesus, Jen, it's just one beer." He waits a beat, and then he adds, "Maybe two. It's hot." The bartender brings his Heineken, and he drinks about half of it right away. "Ahhhhh. God, that's good."

"How long has it been since you had a beer?" Jen asks, curious. She sips at her own, which is the perfect blend of bitter and rich. Wonderful stuff. Now that she's decided to try to get into Invicta FC, she'll have to give it up. And probably lose five pounds, maybe – or put on ten of muscle. Which means fewer empty calories (like alcohol) and lots of protein shakes. Which she should probably do anyway; look at Tommy's impressive six-pack. Impressive everything, really. Man's a fucking _beast_.

"Couple years, probably." He's not really paying attention to her. He keeps turning around to look at the tables. Then their cheeseburgers arrive, and she tears into hers, appetite primed from two weeks of eating righteously, not to mention sexual frustration and the deliciousness of her Golden Monkey beer. This burger is perfection; in her opinion, it's the sole reason for coming to the Star City, Victory beer notwithstanding.

Her burger's a memory and his is half gone when she slows down and starts paying attention again. "You're not gonna eat it all?" Usually they finish eating at about the same time.

"It's a little greasy. Maybe I'll take it in a doggy bag and you can have it later." He's actually started on another beer, his third judging by the two empties. The bottle's so cold it's sweating down the side, but he picks it up and swings around on the stool, yet again looking at the tables. So she picks up her beer glass and swings around as well. The lunch crowd is slowing down, and there are plenty of open tables so she doesn't feel like they need to leave right away.

He's still looking at the family at the four-top table not far away, and she happens to catch the littler kid saying, "Daddy, I need to go to the bathroom!" His father stands up and helps him out of the chair, and then says something to the older boy, and all three of them head for the restrooms.

The woman finishes the last of what looks like an iced tea, sets down her glass, and picks up the bill to look at it. Then she stands up, grabbing her shoulder bag and rooting through it. Jen feels Tommy's leg, right next to hers, tense up, and looking at him she sees that he's got his game face on.

It's the same fuck-you look she's seen him give his opponents before a match, and why he's making it now she doesn't know. Old girlfriend? Clearly the kids are not his; they don't look a thing like him, even the darker-haired one. And while she wouldn't put it past him to have dallied with married women – at least in the past, when he was the guy he says he's not anymore – this one looks _really_ married.

Jen looks the woman over again: wavy brown hair, froufrou Swiss Miss dress that shows off her small waist and round, soft breasts. She's short, but shaped like a woman instead of a girl; Jen bets she has trouble finding clothes that fit her. The dress hits at knee length, and Jen's lip almost curls at the lacy edging at the hem, but then she sees the _shoes_ – burnt orange leather wedges with peep toes on a medium heel, actually pretty funky – and Jen immediately forgives her for the dress.

Tommy turns sideways on the stool to Jen and says, urgent and low-voiced, "You ready to go?"

"Just about," she says. "Need to finish my beer." She's not going to rush through a Golden Monkey, which is just as good at room-temperature as it is ice-cold, maybe better.

"I'll take care of the check and then I'm gonna wait outside, okay?" he says.

"Don't do that," she orders, and he exhales through his nose but stays put.

It's not so much that she minds sitting alone. Her alarm bells have started jangling and she is dying to know what's going on with Tommy and that girl. Not to mention that once you start putting up with rude behavior from a guy it will never stop. (Watching Amber date has taught her that one.)

The girl in aqua puts some money on the table and then turns toward them on her way to the door, and Jen can pinpoint the moment at which she sees Tommy: her eyes get big and she freezes. And then she registers Jen's presence, and her face contorts as if she's just taken a fist to the solar plexus. She stands completely still for just a minute, and then she relaxes her face and lifts her chin, and starts to walk toward them.

Tommy, whose body is still turned toward Jen, must catch the motion out of the corner of his eye, because he mutters _fuck _so quietly she almost can't hear him. Aqua-Dress walks up and stands a few feet away.

"Hi, Tommy," she says in a careful sort of voice that is more mature-sounding than her appearance is – up close this girl is prettier, and older, and shorter than Jen had realized. "Glad to see you looking well."

For two seconds Jen wonders if he's actually going to speak to the girl, and then he swivels on the seat toward her. He just nods with his face as closed-off and cold and sullen as it's ever been, and says nothing. Doesn't smile, just stares at her with a go-away, screw-you sort of expression.

Aqua-Dress stares back for a few seconds, apparently waiting for a response, and when there isn't one her lips press together and her chin goes up a little higher. _Stubborn_, Jen surmises. And then the woman turns to Jen and introduces herself. "Hi, I'm Kelly Doherty," she says, holding out her hand.

Jen takes it, and they shake. "Jen Peretti." She gets a good look at the woman's face, and is startled by how pale her eyes are, like glaciers she's seen pictures of.

"Nice to meet you," they say to each other, cordial as society ladies. (Not that Jen knows any. She watches a lot of Showtime, though.) As if this isn't weird as hell, Tommy not talking and them having to introduce themselves to each other instead of having him do it. What did she_ do_ to Tommy?

And then Tommy does say something. "Let me guess. You just got out of church, right?" he says, eyebrows up. The tone of his voice is just on the polite side of sarcastic, so that it could be taken either way.

Kelly Doherty apparently decides to take it as polite. "Yes, as a matter of fact. Good service today." Her tone is cool and pleasant, but for all that there's some subtext here Jen hasn't figured out yet.

"Nice little family outing, huh? 'Family that prays together' and all that."

"You got it." They look at each other for three silent seconds before Kelly goes on. "Speaking of family, your brother misses you like crazy. You should call him."

Tommy's eyes narrow. And then the handsome tall blond man is standing there next to Kelly, holding the hand of the littler boy. The older one says, "Hi, Tommy!" and waves, and his father looks surprised – and suspicious.

"Hi yourself, Jack. Martin, how ya doin'?" Tommy says to the boys.

"Good. I had a hot dog." the brown-haired kid says with enthusiasm, and Tommy's face cracks into a brief, sweet smile Jen has never seen on his face before.

"Good for you, dude."

Kelly's lunch companion gathers Martin back from standing near Tommy's knee. "And who's this?" he asks Kelly, acidly cheerful the way some men get when their women talk to anybody else.

"You remember Tess, don't you? She keeps the boys for me while I work?" Kelly says to the man. "This is her brother-in-law, Tommy Conlon, and his friend Jen Peretti."

"Pleased to meet you," the tall guy says, shaking Jen's hand with a smile. "I'm Mike Porter. Kelly's husband."

Tommy's standing up now, and even though the guy has six inches and maybe twenty pounds on him, there is a controlled fury about him, a barely-leashed mayhem right behind his eyes. "Ex. _Ex_-husband," he says, and he ignores Mike Porter's outstretched hand.

Porter's smile disappears, and for a minute he looks like he's going to say something cutting to Tommy before thinking better of it. To Kelly, who's standing there unspeaking and wary, he says abruptly, "Well, we'd better get going if we're going to make that movie. I don't want to disappoint the boys." To the two kids he says, "Come on, guys, let's get the car," and without a backward glance he walks to the door, holding each kid by the hand.

Kelly, looking at Jen, opens her mouth to say something, but Tommy forestalls her. "So this is that 'new life' you were talkin' about, huh? Looks a lot like the old one to me." She shifts her level unsmiling gaze to him, and for nine seconds (Jen is counting) they conduct a silent conversation with their eyes.

Jen begins to understand, to see the shape of things that had been unclear ten minutes ago.

"What are you doing with _him_?" Tommy asks, very softly, viciously.

Kelly just looks back at him, her mouth compressed. Then she says, equally viciously, "I'd answer that question if you had _any_ right to ask it." Jen's close enough to hear his tiny intake of breath.

Then Kelly turns her head to Jen, saying in a warmer voice, "Lovely to meet you, Jen, and good luck to you," before she adds, almost casually, "Goodbye, Tommy." The manner is offhand but the voice is not; it's not quite steady.

But Kelly walks away, toward the door, and Jen sees Tommy's eyes close and his throat work as he sits down on the stool. It's just a little reaction – he's still rigidly controlled in his public face – but he is fighting the expression of some emotion he'd rather die than show, even to her, and now Jen knows who Kelly is. Not just her name, but _who she is to Tommy_.

Tommy sits completely still. Back to the thousand-yard-stare. When he gets like that, you can't talk to him, nothing registers at all. He closes up like a bank vault. Jen picks up the check and pays it, adding a nice tip. She finally elbows Tommy, and says, "Hey. Let's blow this popsicle stand."

He gets off the stool. "Where's the check?"

"I paid it. We're good."

"I'll pay you back." He always does this; if they go out together he wants to pay for both of them. Jen has only gotten him to agree to her taking care of the tip, before today.

"Not this time. C'mon, I dragged you over here in the first place."

"I don't need charity," he starts to say, for probably the hundredth time, but she interrupts him.

"I know. But I'm paying for once, so shut up." They walk outside, and the humid air hits like a wall. Ugh. Philly in July, what a picnic. Jen's on autopilot now as she's been so many times before. You shut off everything personal, and you just watch and listen; you wait to see what might be a threat. She heads home, maintaining a sense of Tommy walking beside her, but when she glances over to see what's going on with him, his mind's somewhere else. He might be grinding his teeth, she's not sure.

Halfway there some deviltry makes her stop walking, just to see how long it will take him to notice. The answer? A full block. He stops at the cross-street for traffic, and only then does he turn to see where Jen is. She's standing, hands on hips, waiting, but when he turns around she walks toward him again. Even after he said no to her twice, last night and this morning, it's taken that little scene for Jen to accept that it's just not going to happen between her and Tommy.

When she catches up, he says, "What?"

"Nothing really. You're miles away." He probably is, in his mind. Probably wherever that woman lives.

"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention." The WALK sign blinks on as cross-traffic stops, and they start again.

She holds her tongue until they're upstairs in her apartment, in the air conditioning and out of the humidity and she can breathe. He already folded away the hide-a-bed into the couch earlier, and the apartment is pristinely neat, which still feels alien to Jen. She likes her stuff out where she can look at it. Oh well. It doesn't matter now.

He's standing immobile in the middle of the living room, profile turned to her. He's looking at nothing, and he's got that strange quality she'd noticed before: he might be still, but on the inside there's a caged tiger, pacing. She takes a deep breath, because she's going to unlatch the cage.

"You," she says firmly, "are in love with that girl." He closes his eyes and inhales, and she sees the tips of his ears go a burning red: confirmation, no matter what he says. "You are _ass-over-teakettle_ in love with her."

He exhales and opens his eyes, and then turns his head to her. She waits for the tiger attack but there is none. "Yeah," he says.

"So why aren't you with her?" she wants to know. Because it looked to her like that girl, woman, whatever, loves him too. No matter who she was with today or how snippy they got with each other – Jen saw the way she looked at him.

He's silent for a minute, still not moving, just looking at her. "Why? Because I am scared as hell that I would ruin her life."

"How would you ruin her life?" Jen wants to know, because this sounds like a complete crock of shit to her.

"Because that guy, her ex? He beat the shit out of her a couple of years ago. Broke her arm. Cheated on her."

"Well, I get why you'd be pissed off at him, and maybe why you're pissed off at her, but as for _you_ ruining her life? That makes no damn sense," Jen decides out loud, and goes into the kitchen for her secret six-pack stash of Coke Zero for desperate times. This is one such. She splits a bottle between two glasses and adds lots of ice.

He comes to stand in the kitchen doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Making sure we have sustenance. Because we are going to sit down here at the table and you are gonna 'splain this to me. _Now._"

"I don't want to talk," he says, but not defiantly. More like he's already defeated.

"I know, but you're gonna," she says, and carries the glasses to the table. "You owe me that much, after turning me down twice in a row. Because, let me tell ya, my blow jobs are phenomenal."

And he_ finally_, as she'd intended, laughs. Comes and sits down in the chair across from hers. But he doesn't start talking; she has to begin it.

"So to say no to me, you must be crazy about her. But you're not with her, and I don't get why. Did she ditch you for the ex? That would have been crazy." That might possibly make sense, except that Kelly didn't seem all that into the ex.

He shakes his head. Sips some Coke. "God, that tastes good. I really am blowing my diet today."

"So you ditched _her?_ Tommy, you are unbelievably stupid."

He sighs, and then he starts to tell her what happened, only he starts way back at being frustrated with his nieces, and she's got to sit through all kinds of mixed up details to get to the parts about MMA fights and flashbacks and college and being a stepfather and dishonorable discharge and guilt and Kelly's divorce and bad fisty-husband genes and not having a job and what the hell is he doing with his life. It takes _for freaking_ _ever._ He does not say much about sex and longing and love, but she watches his face and sees how much of that is there. He's thinking about it, even if he doesn't say anything.

"Dumbass," she says again, but with equal parts affection and exasperation this time. "If you're _scared_ you're gonna fuck it up, of _course _you're gonna fuck it up. If you _think_ you can't do it, then you're right. I'd have thought you knew that already. Anybody that does any kind of sports knows that. It's basic psychology. What they call a..." she has to think a minute, "oh yeah, a self-fulfilling prophecy."

He blinks and looks at her, then back at the table. He has been fairly emotional all during the telling of the why-he-walked-out saga, more words out of his mouth than she's heard in the past three and a half weeks, but now he seems calm. Talked out, maybe.

And it's really strange, but from being jealous of this Kelly chick a few hours ago, Jen's gone to actually being on her side. Because, not to mention the horrible ex, if Tommy had done that to Jen, he'd be picking up the shreds of his liver right now. Jen wouldn't have kept her mouth shut about her obvious heart pains and been nice to his new female companion, she'd have raised all hell and there would be blood on the walls.

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" she demands. He nods, and goes on nodding. "You have to fix this, Tommy. You just _ditched her_. Without telling her what was going on. And then you sent her a letter telling her it's been fun, but she should get on with her life? You asshole. You practically abandoned her to the ex. And_ then_ the next time you see her you're with some other girl? It's a wonder she didn't stick a fork into your eyeball today._ I'd_ have done that. You would have been damn sorry you punted my ass like that." She looks at him, sitting there nodding like he knows he's totally screwed. "You ditched everybody instead of dealing with it."

"I know I have to fix it. But I don't know _how_ to," he says.

"Simple. You go home. You go back to your brother's house and his friend's gym, and you go to counseling, and you beg forgiveness, and you _fix this damn thing_. Nobody else can fix it, but you have to. Didn't Kelly say your brother missed you?"

"Oh, God, Brendan. I don't even want to think about Brendan," he says, and rests his head briefly in his hands.

"Like he's perfect or something and he can't understand fucking up?" Jen says. Ridiculous. "He never did anything bad to you? Because I've seen that fight, you know. You looked like you wanted to kill him. Made a pretty serious effort at it, as far as I could tell."

That hits him hard. He lifts his head and shakes it. "It's weird. It's like my whole life, everything that happens to me over the last six months – everything that happens just says to me over and over that I can't blame him for the decisions he made. That we're more alike than I ever thought we were."

"I thought you said he's a good guy and his wife is crazy about him," she reminds him. "So if you're a lot alike, what is there to make you think you wouldn't be like him that way?"

"Pop," he says. He's already mentioned, briefly, his parents' relationship and the reason he and his brother hadn't seen each other in years.

"You don't sound like your dad to me," Jen says. Because he really doesn't. "I think you're just _scared_ that you're like him, without a whole lot of reason to be."

"That much is true," he says. "I am scared I'm like Pop." He's quiet a minute, and then he tells her about shoving Frank.

"Were you mad?" she wants to know.

"Yeah. I wanted him out of the way," he says. "I didn't have good control of myself."

"But what I'm saying is, from what you said happened, you used enough force to get him out of the way, and you stopped. You didn't punch hell out of his face, you didn't kick the shit out of him – you moved him away from the door, and then you were done." It seems pretty clear to Jen.

He's silent, thinking, apparently just considering what she's said. And some weight seems to fall off his shoulders, like he's realized he doesn't have to keep carrying that much of it.

"This is Frank Campana, right? Everybody says he's really good. I think you should go back," she says. It's absolutely what he should do. He should go _fix things_ – with his trainer, with his brother. With that Kelly girl. "I mean, Lou is okay, but he's not Frank Campana. That guy is big-time, and you are so far beyond what Lou could do for you it's not funny. If you're gonna fight, you need to go back."

"But should I be fighting?" he asks her. "I mean, shouldn't I give up on this and just go get a real job?"

And she has to laugh. "You're _good _at this shit, remember? You're really good. And I want to place a bet on you winning Sparta III this year. Don't let me down, dude." He smiles a little. "Really. You should fight. Time enough to think about a so-called real job later, when you age out of this." She takes a good look at him, sitting there at the table with only a couple of half-melted ice cubes left in his glass, no hint of caged tiger about him now. "Start by calling your brother. I bet you a Golden Monkey Triple he'll fall over his ass to get you home."

He smiles a little bigger. "I don't want the other side of that bet."

"We can bet the same side," she says, just to argue.

He rolls his eyes. "Both sides cannot bet the same way, or there's no _bet,_ dumbass." But now there's a sort of peace in his expression. "Yeah, I'm gonna call Brendan."


	40. Chapter 40: Going Back

**Chapter 40: Going Back**

**As always, I claim only my own characters. Also, the management would like to post a reminder that reviews make the Story Machine grind faster... so please, go ahead and leave me one. I'd love it.**

Kelly sits through Despicable Me 2 without seeing any of it. She doesn't register the minions' antics; she doesn't follow the plot; the only way she knows it's over is that the lights come on, and she knows she's going to be lost when the boys do the funny bits for her later. Not even hearing from Brendan that Tommy is staying with a girlfriend was as painful as seeing him with her, _seeing_ this girl so casual and relaxed that she could lounge on a bar stool and drink beer and look on with calm interest as her man talked to another woman. Which tells Kelly that either that girl, Jen, either didn't know who Kelly was, or had absolutely no fear that Tommy would still have feelings for Kelly. Either way, it hurts like hell, and it's left a splinter of ice in her heart where Tommy is concerned.

All this time that she's been thinking that once he comes back to his senses he'll want her again, all this time she's been wrong. It really is over.

Well, all right then. Screw him. Maybe she'll date someone. She'd just met someone last week, or re-met, to be more precise – a guy who'd escorted an older man in for a knee problem. The younger man had stared at her in the waiting room when she'd called her patient back to have a look at things before Dr. Walker came in, and she'd asked her patient what his companion's name was.

The patient, Sam Killen, a black man in his fifties with a worn face but a lot of patience in it, had smiled. "That's my partner," he'd said. "Name's Joe Gilhooley. Normally my wife would bring me to any doctor's appointment, but she went on vacation with her sister and Joe filled in. Joe's a good guy."

Joe Gilhooley, that sounded familiar, and his face had seemed familiar to her too. How would she know a Joe Gilhooley? She'd shaken it off and gotten back to asking about the patient's recovery from a bullet wound – apparently Sam Killen was a detective with the Philly PD, who'd survived a run-in with a guy running a meth lab out of his apartment. When she'd walked her patient, who used a rather dashing cane, back to the waiting room, his partner had immediately stood up to help him and also given Kelly another inquisitive look.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to stare," the guy had said. "But you look really familiar. Penn State?" Yeah, she'd gone to Penn State, and yeah, she'd been there 8 or 10 years before. "Were you in the chorus?" he'd asked, narrowing his eyes at her, and she'd laughed out loud as the penny dropped.

"That's it! You're a tenor, right?"

He'd nodded, and she'd looked him over again. Medium height, on the slender side, dark hair, velvety brown eyes both shrewd and full of humor, dimples, and a wide masculine mouth. If she remembered correctly, he'd gotten a heck of a lot better looking since leaving college.

So then she'd introduced herself, and he'd finally smiled. "Ohhhh, yes, I remember you. You're a soprano. I was two rows behind you in concert formation."

"Only two?" she'd teased, knowing that she'd always, always been on the front row, where everybody puts the short people. "You're not that short."

He'd offered her his business card, telling her that he'd love to just catch up with her sometime, and she was welcome to call him any day. Or email, that was fine too. And while he'd helped Sam out to his car (silver Nissan Sentra, she could see it out the window), she'd actually scoped out his butt, feeling a little guilty about it.

So maybe she'll call Joe Gilhooley. Who does not wear a wedding ring.

In Mike's Forester, heading back to her house after the movie, she can't wait any more so she pulls out her cell phone and calls Tess to tell her that she saw Tommy at Star City at lunch. Tess shrieks so loud that Kelly has to jerk the phone away from her ear, and starts spouting questions one right after another. Like, "Did you talk to him? What did he say? Who was he with? Did he look okay? Is he coming home?"

"Slow down! Okay, he looks pretty healthy, for one thing, and he seemed physically fine. I said hello, and he really did not want to talk to me so I don't know if he's coming home, but I met the girlfriend and said hello to her too."

"Ooh, what's she like?" Tess wants to know, and Kelly sends up a quick prayer that her voice won't give her away.

"She's very pretty. Looks sort of tough – she's got a lot of visible tattoos, and she's really fit, but she seems nice enough."

Mike shoots her a look she doesn't understand, and she holds the phone away and mouths "What?" at him. He shakes his head and goes back to driving, and she goes back to listening to Tess, now telling Brendan the news. And then Tess speaks to her again, asking things she can't answer, like where did Tommy meet this girlfriend, and where's she from, and Kelly has to say that she doesn't know, because Tommy seemed annoyed and she didn't ask.

"Oh. Annoyed?" Tess says, and Kelly says yes, not wanting to explain when Mike is _right there_. "And the girlfriend is really pretty?"

"Yes. Very. I might go as far as saying she's beautiful." All her life, Kelly's wanted to be Mata Hari, all dark and exotic and mysterious, and instead she got short and cute, like Shirley Temple with boobs, in the genetic lottery. Sucks.

Tess says, "Well, that figures," in an of-course sort of way, and Kelly has to agree. Yeah. Of course it does._ The beautiful fucked-up man is too beautiful for it to be any other way._

But Tess says thanks, and she'll see Kelly and the boys tomorrow morning, and she appreciates good news for once. Kelly slips her cell phone back into her purse, and then turns to Mike. "What was that all about?"

"What was wh– Oh. See, I'm pretty sure I know that girl." Kelly raises her eyebrows at him, and he makes a face. "A bunch of the guys used to go by Tailfeathers sometimes after first shift. She works there. Or at least, she used to."

"They _used to_ go by there?" Kelly might not be up on everything, but she knows what goes on at Tailfeathers.

"Yeah. Well, they probably still go, but I don't go with them now." Mike's still pulling this _I'm all better now, let's try this again _crap, which she doesn't believe and wouldn't touch with a forty-foot pole. She doesn't mind spending time as two parents with their kids, but there just ain't gonna be any more Mike-and-Kelly. Like, ever.

"I see." She probably sounds as pissed-off as she is, and just now it occurs to her that she has no idea where Tommy might have even met Jen, and that just ticks her off even more. Bastards. Show a guy a pair of tits and his brain shuts off. "Wait a minute, did you just recognize her or something? They let guys get that close to the girls?"

"I recognized her tattoos," Mike says, evading the question of closeness. "Big rose with thorns on her left bicep, did you see it? And the dragon that curls from her right hip down her thigh, I could see that one too. Heart and dagger on her calf. A couple of other ones on her back, if I remember. This was back when Gary was getting that big eagle on his shoulders and I was thinking maybe I might do one too, and I was noticing people's tattoos. Speaking of which, that dude has a lot of them."

Kelly just nods. Because she _knows_, she knows every single one of them and they are sexy as hell. Probably he thinks Jen's tattoos are sexy. Bastard.

"So that's the guy who fought his brother in that Sparta thing and got his arm ripped off, huh?" Ugh. "Man, that was ballsy. He wouldn't give in even with a busted shoulder. The guy does not know when to quit."

_When his girl has mental problems, that's when he quits_, she thinks. Damn it, this is getting harder. She sort of ignores Mike for the last five minutes of the drive, completely misses what he's talking about because she's thinking about Tommy and how he could leave her and go move in with a stripper, it just makes her _sick_ with jealousy.

Mike drops her and Jack and Martin at her house, and suggests that maybe he could come in for awhile, but Kelly's tired and annoyed and she's had enough of Mike for one day. She wants to get the boys bathed and in bed early, and then she wants to take a hot bath with scented oil and drink a glass of wine, and collapse into bed herself. She tells Mike thanks for a fun Sunday outing, and politely but firmly shuts the door.

She is not going to cry. Instead, she might call Joe Gilhooley. Just to say hi. His cell phone number is on that card.

As it turns out, he's glad to hear from her when she calls. They chat a little and decide on a coffee date on Thursday night. He says he'd love to meet her children; all he's got is an aging uncle and a supercilious cat. It makes her laugh, which God knows she hasn't done much of lately.

_Screw Tommy Conlon and his going AWOL, __**and**__ his stripper girlfriend_, she's thinking while she runs her bath, and she's so annoyed at how much it still hurts that she's distracted enough to not make absolutely sure her phone's out of the way, and it falls in while she's in her room getting fresh nightgown and underwear. Damn it, that's another thing she's got to do tomorrow, replace that cell phone. She's not even going to try to resurrect this one. Well, maybe she'll throw it in a container of dry rice and see if it survives, but honestly she doesn't care. It was cheap, and she'd like to upgrade anyway.

She spends the rest of her evening keeping Tommy out of her mind.

O : O : O :

Tommy says, "Yeah, I'm gonna call Brendan," and Jen feels the enormous satisfaction of having fixed something important. He absolutely needs to get his ass back to his brother's house and settle things out, and then he needs to settle things with his dad and his trainer... and his girl.

But maybe not just yet. She's got inch-thick pork chops in the fridge that she was going to saute and top with bacon-onion sauce, and she'd really like for him to stay for that. Dinner's only a couple of hours off now. So she says, "Look, can you stay for supper, or are you dying to get back there right away?" He looks at her, surprised. "Because I know you're not coming back, and I wanted to, you know, give you a good send-off. So you can't tell your sister-in-law I didn't feed you." She's half kidding and half not, she wants his family to think well of her. Brendan Conlon may not be fighting anymore, but people tend to respect him in the MMA world. She needs all the good words put in for her that she can get... and then, too, she's started to count Tommy as a real friend.

And he deserves awesome pork chops with bacon-onion sauce. Yeah.

He pulls out his cell phone, starts to dial it, and then goes out, waving at Jen as he goes. She walks to the window and peers out, and in a few minutes she can see him down in front of the building, just off the sidewalk, talking. She's not sure, but she thinks he might be smiling too.

She sighs, but she knows she's right: he needs to do this. He needs to fix things. It's time.

When he comes back, there's a kind of glow to his face, and he says that it looks like things will work out okay. Then he says that he probably ought to do a load of laundry so his sister-in-law won't feel like she has to take care of that, even though he'd do it himself. So yeah, he'll stay for dinner. She starts the potatoes baking in the oven, while he heads downstairs with his dirty t-shirts, and makes a spinach salad with orange sections and pecans, with a mustard-cider vinaigrette to go over it.

He comes back upstairs and starts repacking his duffel bag. He's sort of obsessively neat, and she wonders how she would have dealt with that if they'd gotten serious about each other. It drives her crazy that she can't leave a dish in the sink, and apparently the dish in the sink makes him nuts.

Then he says, "Think I'll step next door and say hey to the guys. Before I go." And she nods. Let him tell them. She can pump them for what he said to them later (Cole will remember, he is just as good as a girl when it comes to the crucial "I said... and then HE said..." conversational details).

She starts the bacon-onion sauce, which needs to simmer. Fries three pieces of bacon while she minces a quarter of a large sweet onion and a garlic clove, and then after taking the bacon out of the pan she caramelizes the onion and garlic in the bacon grease. Stirs in two tablespoons of orange juice, two of cider vinegar and one of packed brown sugar, as well as a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and half a teaspoon of dried thyme. Then she crumbles the bacon into the sauce, brings the mixture to a boil, turns the heat down to Low so it can simmer for fifteen minutes, and sets the table. And then he's back. "Can I help you do anything?" he wants to know.

"Well, it's under control for the moment," Jen tells him, and then teases a little. "Although I can't believe you are just _leaving_ me here with Steve's Girls and the gay guys next door."

He looks at her with this skeptical face, and then he says, "I got news for you: Grey is not gay."

"Sure he is."

"Why do you say that?" he wants to know.

Come to think of it, she_ doesn't_ know for sure. She thinks it was something Dagan said right after they moved in, but she might have just assumed that since Dagan was and Cole was, Grey was too. Huh. She tilts her head to the side. "Huh. I don't know. I just thought he was, even though it didn't seem to fit him. There's a photo of him with a girl in his room, and the way he was looking at her confused me. But if he's not gay –"

"He's not," Tommy interrupts her.

" – then that clears up something that was confusing me." She looks at him narrow. "So how did you know?"

"Saw him lookin' at you," Tommy says smugly. "He did not like me one bit at first, and I finally figured out he thought I was taking advantage of you."

Jen does not say that at one point she was really _hoping _Tommy would take advantage of her. Naked advantage. What she says is, "Oh." Huh. Grey is pretty hot, but he's no Tommy. But then, nobody else is either. "So you think he likes me or something?" It's an intriguing idea.

"Pretty sure he's got the serious hots for you," Tommy says, and flashes her this wicked grin. "Not that I can blame him. And you oughta ask him to move in, so he can help you with the rent."

"You really think so?"

"Yep."

Huh.

When the potatoes have twenty minutes left to cook, she starts heating her saute pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Tommy goes back to the laundry room to toss his clothes into the dryer. She seasons the pork chops with salt and pepper, and then when the pan is hot enough she sautees the chops thoroughly but not too long, about 6-7 minutes per side. The potatoes come out, the chops get topped with bacon-onion sauce, and the salad's already on the table. Then he's back, and for some time they just eat. At some point he says, "This is _awesome_, can I have the recipe for Tess?"

"Sure. I'll write it down after we finish."

There's a pause, and then he says, "Do you think Lou will be disappointed?" While Jen's chewing, he goes on. "That's assuming Frank doesn't want to have me hauled into jail for assault."

"I wouldn't think so, not after all this time. I mean, he could have reported it then, but he didn't, so I can't imagine he would now." Everybody knows Frank Campana is big on holistic training, body and soul, that sort of thing, so Jen imagines he's a calm enough person that he could take a shove from an extremely upset guy in stride.

He shrugs. "I don't know."

"Don't you dare chicken out on this," she warns him. "Or I will beat your ass with a big stick."

He laughs a little. "You're not Kelly," he says. "She might cuss me up one side and down the other, but she'd never threaten me with a stick."

"Oh no?"

"Nope. She's pretty anti-violence." After three more bites, he goes on. "You're not much like her. Except that you're both really blunt."

"And you like that about her?" Jen wants to know. He nods. "Look, I'm gonna be nosy and ask. _Why her? _Why does she matter to you?"

He shrugs. "Lot of reasons. I don't know that I could say exactly why."

"Well, have a whack at it," she says, impatient. For fuck's sake, he's _such_ a guy.

"It's kind of weird, you know," he says, "the first time I met her I wasn't really looking at her. And she was really easy to talk to. About stuff that mattered... like how you made me talk yesterday? She did that, too. Except she just asked questions instead of yelling at me, and maybe they were the right questions. Or maybe it was okay to talk to her because she was upset about something and I didn't feel like a freak, I don't know."

"And?"

"And then she made me laugh. And then I started noticing how pretty she is. Or maybe it was the other way around, I'm not sure. It mighta been all over the day I noticed her ass. But really..." he trails off and fiddles with his knife while he thinks, "really, there's this... and you're gonna think I'm outta my fucking gourd, but, um, there's this sort of connection between her and me. Like sometimes I feel... no, never mind." He shakes his head and clamps his lips together (those beautiful lips), so he's probably done talking about it.

"She looks like a missionary position with the lights off kind of girl," Jen observes, because she wants Tommy to keep talking, and also because Kelly does look very very traditional. How plain-vanilla sex could be so compelling she's not sure, but hey, she's not Tommy.

Tommy doesn't say anything, but some small change in his face tells Jen that she's gotten it wrong.

"Oho, so you got inventive?" She's teasing him now.

He does this shy little grin off to the the side, which is brand new and completely adorable, like he's a little kid in a man's body. Then he says, "Nope, I'm not talkin' about it," but he's still grinning a little, and all of a sudden she feels more less like bonking him than ever, and more like just being his friend. Which is kind of nice.

"So I'm not easy to talk to?" she asks.

"Well, now you are," he says. "I like your no-bullshit thing. You know... I think maybe if I'd met you first I'd have really fallen for you. But I didn't, and that's just the way it is." He looks back at her. "Kind of cool to have girls for friends. It's new. Well, there was Pilar, but she was Manny's. She got me because of Manny, it's not like we would've been friends without him."

"This is good to know. Listen, will you check in with me sometime? Because people down at Russo's, they like you. And the guys next door, they like you too. Don't forget us, okay?"

He looks surprised, and then he nods like he's adding things up. "People are a lot more decent than you think, you know?"

Jen thinks about her foster families – and her mother - and is inclined at first to argue the point. But he needs faith, not reality. "I think you find your people and you stick with them. You gotta do that."

"Yeah."

When dinner's over, and he helps her with the dishes. While she's putting them away (he's right, the place is nicer when everything is in its proper spot), he goes to get his dry laundry and fold it and drop it into the duffel bag while she writes down a couple of recipes – the bacon-onion pork chops, and the one for swordfish. Now he's ready to leave.

He stands by the door and smiles at her, then says, "It's been great, Jen. Really. You don't know."

"Yes, I do. Glad I could be your port in a storm." And she steps close and hugs him, a nice warm hug that has nothing to do with sex but a lot to do with liking, and maybe Alexa's right to hug the Girls at the gym because it's kind of nice.

"Thank you," he says, and then lets go. And then he's gone.

O : O : O :

Tommy walks to the bus stop, duffel slung over his shoulder like it's been so many times. Sometimes he's wondered whether the thing might grow attached, as much time as it's spent there.

But he's going back to Brendan's, and even though he knows he has a lot of explaining and asking for favors and, to be honest, begging to do once he gets there, he's looking forward to it. Wants to be there. It feels a little bit like rejoining the human race, almost like it felt when he got out of the brig.

_Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in_, he remembers his JAG, Lt. Wayland, telling him before his court-martial. Well, maybe Brendan's house is home for now, at least. When he'd called Brendan earlier, it was all he could do to get a word in edgewise, because Brendan was immediately yelping stuff like _Come home_ and_ I miss you_ and _we all miss you, Tommy,_ and _Please, Tommy_.

When he'd finally managed to get Brendan to shut up long enough, he'd said, "Look, that's why I'm calling you. I wanted to know, is it okay if I come by?" Why he can't actually call Brendan's house home is sort of a mystery, but there it is. He can't. Quite.

That sent Brendan off into another set of exclamations about of _course_ Tommy can come over, any time, _any time_. He can stay, if he wants. They'd _love_ to have him.

"Good," he'd said, not quite laughing at his brother's obvious anxiousness to have him in the house. He wouldn't put it past Brendan to handcuff him to the bannister so he can't leave, and the thought does actually make him laugh. "I'll be there sometime this evening."

"Tess says Kelly says she saw you today," Brendan had said. "What time you comin'?"

"I don't know. Not late."

"Can I come get you?" Brendan had sounded really eager to do it. "Easiest thing in the world, I'll come get you wherever you are – "

"No." Tommy's firm. He needs to do this all himself. He needs the journey. It won't take that long, anyway. "No, but I'll see you later. Promise, man."

"Okay." Tommy had said goodbye and hung up, guessing that if he could have seen Brendan that minute, his brother would have been sitting down, intensely focused on the conversation and ignoring everything else around him.

God, he's missed Brendan awful.

And now here's the bus. He can't take it all the way to the house; he'll have to walk about eight blocks but that's no distance at all. He's back to running his usual six to seven miles in the morning, and if he's not back to the schedule of stuff he'd been doing at Frank's before he'd... burned out, he guesses, he's at least back to 75% of it. And maybe that's good. He'll see what Frank says. Assuming Frank doesn't run him off the place with a pitchfork.

Forty minutes later he's at the closest stop to Maple Heights, slinging his bag back over his shoulder once again and starting to walk. It's cooling off now, but it's still humid, so he knows he's going to be a sweaty mess when he gets there.

Brendan won't care.

He lets himself think a little bit about Kelly, how she'd looked this afternoon, and how closed-off she'd been. On somebody else that would have been normal, but not for her, not for the woman who lives on the emotional roller coaster the way she does. What she'd looked like today, he thinks, is the same way she'd looked when she'd been on the phone with that sleazy asshole Mike, discussing the missing child-support check, he realizes, and he has to suck in some air to get past how much that hurts. That she's treating him the way she treated Mike, calmly and politely and with this "you can't touch me on the inside" attitude, like her feelings have changed.

And that's so awful a possibility that for a minute he has to stop walking. To love somebody who doesn't love you anymore, that's so horrible. It's what Pop had been through, back when he'd first been trying to make amends with Tommy and Tommy had thrown all those overtures back into Pop's face.

No. He won't let that be true. He won't even think it.

Rosie and Emily might be in pajamas when he gets there. They might be eating ice cream, or having their bath. But he won't be able to sleep unless he gets to hug them good night. He hadn't hugged Jack or Martin today – too shell-shocked at seeing their mom, probably – and he regrets that now. But he can see them tomorrow.

Two blocks away from Brendan's.

Will Tess hug him too? It's funny, but after getting to be friends with Jen, he appreciates Tess a lot more. They don't get each other very often, he and Tess, but they're on the same side. He'll hug _her_. It's probably time he started treating her like a sister.

A block and a half away – and somebody on their side of the street has got the whole house lit up, every window and all the outside lights, so that the light is the only place your eyes want to go. He wonders for half a second what's going on, and then he knows.

And then he sees somebody running his direction. It takes him a second or two to realize that it's not some jogger out in the cool of the evening, it's his brother, and without even thinking about it he drops the duffel and runs toward him.

They run right into each other and hold on tight, and Brendan's face feels wet next to his, and his own throat is so closed up he can't respond while Brendan's saying he _missed_ him, he missed him _so much_, and it was worse than the first time Tommy left, and don't leave again, please. He manages to say, "I won't," into Brendan's ear, and hug tighter.

For all the years they spent together, fighting over skateboards and talking about superheroes in bed at night, ducking Pop's fists and his shouting, and for all the years they didn't spend together, missing each other and feeling abandoned, Tommy hugs Brendan as tightly as he can and promises him, silently, that he won't leave again. Not incognito and incommunicado, not in anger or pain. Never again.

It feels like a few minutes and it feels like hours at the same time. All of it's good. But finally Brendan pulls back and they can smile at each other, go and pick up Tommy's bag – Brendan picks it up, as a matter of fact, and won't let Tommy carry it.

"I saw the lights on," Tommy says, walking right next to his brother and slinging his arm around Brendan's shoulders. "You do that for me?"

"Oh yeah. Tess' idea, actually." Brendan turns to look at him. "You stayin'? I mean, you're not luggin' this damn bag all over the city just for fun, are you?"

"If that's okay, yeah, I wanna stay."

Brendan just shakes his head. "You are insane. Of course it's okay. I_ told _you it was okay."

"Well, good."

"The girls are about to have a fit, I bet Tess is having a hard time keeping them in the house," Brendan says. "They're so excited."

The smile won't go away, he can't keep it off his face. Tess and the girls missed him too. When they turn off the sidewalk to go up to the front door, he sees the yellow ribbon tied to the lamp on the outside of the house, and he misses a step, he's so overwhelmed with the evidence that all along they've wanted him back.

"You okay?" Brendan asks, and he can't answer, he just points at the jaunty yellow bow. "Yeah," Brendan says. "That was Tess, too. She said you'd get it."

Tommy can't stand it anymore, he drops his arm from around Brendan and yanks open the front door, only to be mobbed by little girls in pink cat pajamas. Emily grabs him around the legs, and Rosie keeps begging to be picked up, but he wants to hug them both, so he sits down in front of the couch and just opens his arms for them.

Little girl kisses on the cheek are _awesome_. He guesses he'd already known that, but now he can say it out loud. "I missed you, I missed you so much," he tells them, and kisses them back before he settles with one kid in each arm, hugging tight.

"Did you bring me anything?" Rosie demands, and he cracks up. It's so perfectly Rosie.

Tess, standing in the kitchen doorway and laughing through tears, tells Rosie to hush, but Tommy answers her. "Yes. I brought _myself._" It occurs to him to wonder if Russo's has any more of those "Steve's Girls" tee-shirts in kid sizes, because that would be kind of cool. Too bad he didn't think of it before.

Emily gets on her knees and whispers in his ear, "I don't need any presents, Uncle Tommy. I'm just glad you're not sick anymore."

"Me too, sweetie," he whispers back, and he has a sudden mental flash of his mother looking on with approval. Maybe it's his brain making it up, or maybe she's checking on her boys along with the saints –

The saints, he hasn't thought of them in ages. Funny the things that come to you.

After a few more minutes of getting hugged, he tells the girls he has to get up for a minute. Brendan has come in with Tommy's duffel and dumped it on the floor, going to his wife for a joyous embrace. Tommy's going to interrupt it, because he hasn't hugged Tess yet. He taps Brendan on the shoulder, and says, "My turn."

He hugs Tess tight, and whispers "Thanks, Tess," into her ear. "Thank you for not giving up on me."

"Couldn't," she says back. "Didn't want to."

"I'm glad he married you," he says to her, finally, a thing he should have said months and months ago because it really is true.

"Me too," she says, and then they can smile at each other, and then the whole deal turns into a group hug that lasts a long time. But at last Tess says it's time for the girls to go to bed, and will Uncle Tommy tuck them in?

So he does. With extra hugs and kisses and promises that yes, he will be here in the morning.

Brendan wants to talk when he comes downstairs. Rather, he wants to ask Tommy questions, and that's annoying in itself, but more than that, he's talked out. Done. Ragged from all the emotion and the expressing himself to Jen earlier, and he tells Brendan he just can't, not tonight. And Brendan looks harder at him, and seems to see he just doesn't have it in him right now. "Soon, though?" Brendan asks, so hopeful that Tommy can't help that stupid little smile that won't leave.

"Soon," he agrees. "I'll tell you when I can tell you." Brendan nods.

Tess says there are clean sheets on the bed and clean towels in his bathroom, and he doesn't miss the way she says "your room," and he can't help letting her see the stupid little smile that won't leave, too.

"Thank you," he tells her again, and "I am beat, so good night and I'll see everybody in the morning. Regular time, okay? I'll go running around five and then be back. Nobody freak out if I'm gone."

"No freaking out," Tess repeats and pokes Brendan until he says it too, and then Tommy lugs the duffel into what has become, after all, his room at Brendan's. The shower is good, the bed is good, the quiet and the security is all good. It smells right. It feels right to be here.

He can't sleep yet, though. He has to call Kelly.

She's not answering her phone, though it's not all that late. He hangs up the first time. Maybe she's doing laundry or something. But when he calls again, and again it flips over to voice mail, he leaves a brief message: "Hey, it's Tommy. Call me, please?"

When fifteen minutes have gone by and she still hasn't called, he starts worrying. Was Mike spending the night? Were they, right now, making up in naked ways and getting back together? He knows what she's like, all smooth and hot and juicy, beautiful and passionate, and he can't blame Mike for wanting her back but dammit, she so deserves better than Mike, and the thought of her with somebody else is just killing him although he doesn't _think_ she'd do that. He calls one more time, and this time he can't keep the anguish out of his voice. "Kelly? Kelly, please call me. Please. I miss you so much, so much... I can't stand it. Baby, I love you, and it just killed me seeing you today and knowing I hurt you like that, please forgive me, please. _Please_."

It's terrifying to just hang it out there like that, but he can't see how else it could be. Jen had said he was going to have to grovel, and it looks like she was right about that. Kelly's upset. He can weather that – _they_ can weather that – if she'll just give him another chance.

**A/N: a virtual cashmere sweater vest to anybody who can identify the inspiration for Joe Gilhooley. (Who, for the record, bears a striking resemblance to my Irish grandfather as a young man, bar the shape of the eyes.)**


	41. Ch 41: The Prodigal Son Has an Epiphany

**Ch 41: The Prodigal Son Has an Epiphany**

**A/N: as always, I own only my own characters.**

Monday morning Tommy's up at 5:30 to run his six-mile loop around Brendan's house, and it's so familiar to him he could maybe believe he'd never left.

It feels really good to be running here again, past all these green lawns with swingsets and kids' bikes on them, past the pleasant houses. The old lady who walks her two toy poodles in the morning over on Willow Road waves at him, so he waves back, surprised. And the garbage truck's picking up early, the way they do when the high for the day is going to be close to 100F, and those guys wave at him too. When he cools down and starts his post-run stretch there on the sidewalk in front of Brendan's house, the neighbor across the street comes out and unlocks his car. But when he sees Tommy, he stops and smiles and calls, "Hey, glad you're back!"

"Thanks," Tommy calls back. He doesn't even remember the guy's name. No, he does. It's Todd Rice, and he works at the bank.

Huh. Odd to think that he couldn't just disappear from here and not be missed. It's a strange sort of feeling.

He goes in the house and showers, and when he comes out Tess has breakfast on the table, cantaloupe and sweet cherries and omelets with ham and asparagus and Swiss cheese, plus whole-wheat toast. "Wow," he says. "What is all this?"

"Fatted calf," Tess says, smiling. "Well, sort of. The way Brendan went running out to meet you last night, it made me think of the Prodigal Son story, like how the dad went running out to meet his son coming home. So, you get fancy breakfast. And we are definitely having grilled tenderloin for dinner."

"Sounds great," Tommy says, looking at Brendan's face, gone faintly pink. "I thought the older brother in that story was kind of a jerk. But then it's been a long time since I cracked open a Bible."

"No, you remember right. He was a jerk," Brendan says, forking cantaloupe onto his plate. "He was jealous of all the attention the dad gave the younger brother. And he was so miffed when the dad threw a party after baby bro came home that he went off and sulked in the barn instead of going to the party. Selfish jerk."

"No, I can see that," Tommy says. "He deserved the same kind of attention from his dad, and he didn't get it. That would suck."

"Well, but he blamed his younger brother for it instead of their dad." Brendan looks at him steady on, and he knows they're not talking about Bible people anymore. There's a little silence, and then Brendan says softly, "It's part of why I didn't come see you in the 'Burgh right after you got back a couple years ago. I was still jealous. And I am a world-class sulker."

Tomm looks at Tess, who's standing in the middle of the kitchen holding the coffee carafe, blinking back tears, and she gives him a little smile. He feels his throat tighten. The hell with this reserved crap. He pushes back his chair and goes to his brother, leans over and puts his arms around Brendan. Lays his head over on Brendan's and says, "I missed the hell outta you." The critical voice in his head says this isn't very manly, but he tells it to shut the hell up, he gets to decide how he's gonna be, and men love their brothers, there's nothing wrong with that.

Brendan's arms come up and around him too, and that feels really good. It's only Rosie's coming in and climbing up into Brendan's lap that interrupts the hug. "Hug _me_, Uncle Tommy," she says.

"You are a demanding child," he tells her, but he picks her up and hugs her, loving her solid little-girl weight in his arms and the tickle of her curls on his chin.

"Younger sibling," Brendan says pointedly, but as he grins and blinks his eyes clear again, all of them laugh without even knowing why. It's not funny, but it is, somehow.

Rosie asks if she can eat breakfast sitting on his lap, and when Tommy tells her to ask her mother, Tess says, "Oh, all right. Just this once. If Uncle Tommy is sure he doesn't mind."

He tells Tess it's fine, and while Rosie is picking asparagus bits out of her egg and scooting them to the side of her plate, he looks at Brendan seriously. "So. What's on tap for today?"

Brendan says, "Well, I've got the usual: run with the wrestling team at 8:30, which speaking of that I'd better get a move on, and then weights from 1 to 3 pm, and another run at 7 this evening. I can't let you in the school weight room because you're not officially with the program." He raises his eyebrows. "Unless you want to be my assistant coach. It's not a paid position, but I know you'd be great at it. Or are you goin' back to Russo's?"

Tommy takes a deep breath. "Well... I was thinkin' maybe you might have a word with Frank for me. See if he might be willing to take me back."

Brendan tilts his head to look at Tommy. "You really wanta go back to Frank's?"

"Yeah. I been keepin' up with training at Russo's, not that it's the same, but I feel pretty good and I think I can slip back in. Of course there's probably no chance at Sparta III now, but maybe I can get into the regular UFC rotation, get some fights that way."

Brendan shakes his head. "Quit givin' me the puppy dog eyes, okay? I'll see what I can do." He gets up from the table, and then Emily comes in and insists that she has to have breakfast sitting on Uncle Tommy's other side, which is cool.

Then the front door opens, and Tess says, "There she is! Finally." Kelly comes into the kitchen behind the boys, sees Tommy and stops dead. "You're not answering your phone!" Tess scolds her. "I called you three times last night and twice this morning to tell you the news, and I kept getting your voice mail."

"Dropped my phone into the tub last night," Kelly says, and her voice sounds strange. "It's fried, completely dead. Gotta get a new phone. In fact, I'm running late today, I gotta go." She says, "Good to see you back," in Tommy's direction but she doesn't meet his eyes, and her voice is merely pleasant in contrast to her usual warmth. From her, that greeting is almost like getting slapped. She waves, says, "See y'all later," and leaves.

Tess is still standing there holding Emily's plate, looking fixedly at the door into the living room through which Kelly's just vanished. She says, "Well, _that_ was weird." She shakes her head and then sets Emily's breakfast on the table. Emily digs in, and while Tess is pouring milk she asks Jack and Martin if they've eaten yet.

"Yes, Miss Tess," Jack says, and Martin echoes, "Yeah. Can we go downstairs and play Wii?"

"That's for in the afternoon when it's too hot outside," Tess tells them. "We're running late this morning too. Tell you what, you can watch Dora the Explorer downstairs until everybody's ready to go outside."

"I can put it on the TV," Jack says, and the boys take off.

Rosie says she's finished, and Tess insists that she has to go brush her teeth before she can go downstairs. Tess starts to fuss about the uneaten asparagus, but Tommy gives Tess a let-it-go-this-time look over Rosie's head, and Tess rolls her eyes. "My God," she says to Brendan, "_that's_ where she gets it – the sad puppy look." And she laughs.

"Younger sibling," Brendan points out again. Then he laughs, too. Tommy shrugs, smiling a little bit. He remembers that it had worked pretty well on Mom, but he'd known better than to unleash it on Pop.

Emily finishes her omelet at lightning speed and asks her mother if she can have fruit later, she wants to go get ready for outside. "Me too," Rosie says, and the girls race upstairs, Rosie complaining "No fair, you're faster!" as their voices recede.

"Something is wrong with Kelly," Tess says as she sits back down at the table. "I can't get her to talk to me lately. Every time I ask her if we can have lunch, or whether she'll stay for dinner, she ducks me. I don't know what's wrong, but something is."

The top of Tommy's head goes cold. "She was with Mike," he says, slowly. "Yesterday. When I saw her."

Tess and Brendan look at each other. "She told me it was a family outing," Tess says, uncertainly. "That they were going to try doing a no-stress family thing with the boys once a month."

"Maybe that's it," Brendan says. "Ever since... well, about the time you took off, actually... yeah, she's been sort of distant, wouldn't you say, Tess?"

Tess tilts her head back and forth, considering. "Distant. Yeah, maybe. Evasive. Weepy. I mean, it's _Kelly_, so you have to expect some crying, she's just like that. But more sad than just emotional, I guess. Like whatever's wrong can't be fixed."

"She say anything to you?" Brendan asks Tommy.

_Kelly's been sad. _ Tommy shakes his head, feeling this horrible empty hole in his stomach, even after the excellent breakfast. Maybe she hadn't gotten his message last night.

Maybe he should have called her three weeks ago with it. _Fuck._

He gets up and takes his dishes to the sink, but as he's starting to rinse them off and put them in the dishwasher, Tess shoos him away. "I'll do that today," she says. "You go... see Frank or something."

"If he'll let me in the building," Tommy says, gloomily. "Better call him first." He sighs, and reaches for his phone to call Frank.

There's no answer from Frank's cell, so he leaves a message. "Hey, it's Tommy – Tommy Conlon. Hope you're doin' okay, Frank, wanted to talk to you about, you know, plans and stuff. Call me back when you get a chance, please? Thanks." He closes his phone and looks at Brendan. "You sure you can't put in a good word for me?"

Brendan shrugs and dumps the rest of the coffee out. "I gotta jet or I'll be late for morning run. Listen, why don't you just go down there? And if Frank resists the idea, then I'll talk to him later and talk him around." He looks more seriously at Tommy. "I'm gonna tell you somethin'. You know, when you leave people, you don't get things back exactly the way they were when you left. Remember? I mean, you and me, we are okay. I love you, you're my brother, that will never ever change."

Brendan sighs and bites his lip, looking like he's not able to find the words for what he wants to say, but still trying. "Leaving, Tommy, it changes the relationship. Ever since the first time you left, you and Mom – everything that you and I ever say to each other now, we have to filter it through the past. Don't we? I'm not saying things will always suck, because I think we're good now. But there is a … difference. An empty space. Sometimes I have to look past the things that hurt me, because if I think about them, they hurt too much. They get in the way. You know?"

_Oh, God, it's hopeless._ He'll never get her back. He can't look up, and he's too close to tears for his own comfort. And Frank, maybe he'll never get Frank to forgive him, much less take him back as a client.

And then Brendan leans his forehead over against Tommy's. "I believe in second chances," he says. "Like Kelly keeps saying. And you gotta believe, too. It's not the same, you can't just jump back in. But second chances can be good. Don't give up before you start, okay?"

Tommy nods. He needs to go see Frank and apologize. Whatever Frank says about the training, he needs to apologize anyway. He really ought to make a list of people he needs to apologize to. It'll be really long.

Brendan stands up and looks at the kitchen clock. "Shit. Really late now." He points at Tommy on his way out of the kitchen. "Go see Frank. Take the bike if you want." Then he grabs a Gatorade and his wallet, kisses Tess, and he's gone.

Tess looks at him. "You should go see Frank, Tommy. Really."

Tommy heaves a sigh. "Yeah, okay." He starts to head for his bathroom, but then he comes back to Tess and chucks her on the shoulder. "Hey, thanks for breakfast. Fatted calf, pretty awesome." She smiles at him, a great warm happy smile that makes him realize a couple of things: One, Tess is actually beautiful. Two, it's no wonder she and Kelly are friends. They look sort of alike when they smile.

So he brushes his teeth and puts on his running shoes, and then he packs up the little gym bag with this little kernel of hope in his heart. Maybe Frank will let him apologize. He debates whether he should call Lou now, or wait until he's seen Frank. Now, he decides. It's the honorable thing to do. So he calls Russo's, and as usual Lou's big boomy voice answers, and he says, "Hey, Lou, it's Tommy."

"Tommy! You sick? Take the day if you're sick, we don't wantcha sicker." While he's trying to get his head around Lou being grandfatherly, Lou goes on. "Or if you're headed back to Frank Campana's gym, you go on. But you can come back here if it don't work out."

"How the hell did you know?" he asks Lou in absolute amazement. Is Tommy the only dumb one in the history of the world, or is he just that transparent?

"Well, Jen mighta mentioned to Steve that you were goin' back to your brother's place. Campana's a good guy, you know."

"Yeah." Tommy hesitates. "So are you. Yeah, I'm gonna try to see if I can get back in at Frank's. I'll let you know if I – if it doesn't happen."

"You don't need to call, just show up. Hey, you still gonna make that fight I signed ya up for on Saturday?"

"Yeah, yeah, no problem. Yeah, I'll be there."

"Steve can corner for ya if you want, he'll be there for Pedro."

"That'd be great. Thanks."

"Yeah, guess we'll see ya Saturday then if not before. And good luck to ya, Tommy."

He thanks Lou again and clicks his phone shut. Huh. Are people really just that nice? For no reason? He thinks about it all the way to Soul of a Lion on the bike. People just being nice – Rosa and Charlie at Stark Street Diner. Lou and Steve and everybody at Russo's. People waving at him this morning, like they'd got used to seeing him around and were glad he's back. He doesn't deserve any of it. He doesn't deserve Brendan and Tess being willing, no, _happy_ to have him stay.

Crap, he's gotta call Pop too. He'll be at work now, no point in calling until this evening maybe dinnertime, before Pop heads out to a meeting.

He locks the bike into one of the slots in the rack and adjusts the gym bag on his shoulder, nervous to go in and ask Frank to forgive him. He hates being in this position of asking for favors and stuff, but even more, he hates that he's done something he needs to ask forgiveness for. Out of the blue he hears Mom's voice in his memory, "You're always there for me, Tommy, bless you. Such a good boy." _Make Mom proud,_ he tells himself, and opens the door.

It's pretty busy inside, maybe more crowded than he'd remembered, loud with weights clanking and the thud of gloves on bags and the clamor around one of the practice rings. He can't see Frank, and there's a guy he doesn't know sitting in Frank's office, wearing one of those official gym tee-shirts that Frank's employees wear. Tommy turns and surveys the room again, looking for Jose or Marco or anybody else who might know him. But the employee comes out of Frank's office and says, "Hey, can I help you, man?"

"Um... need to talk to Frank, if he's around."

"He's kinda busy right now." The guy is burly, blond, maybe in his thirties. Looks like a heavyweight, or a former heavyweight; his nose has been broken some time in the past. "You wanna join? I can help you with that. What's your name?"

Tommy hesitates. "Gotta talk to Frank first. And it's Tommy." He turns back to look over the room. "Hey, how about Jose, is he around?"

"His wife's sick, man. He's on leave of absence while she's in the hospital."

Tommy whips his head back around to stare at the guy. "Aw, no... it's serious?"

"I don't know the details," the guy says, looking suspicious now. "Look, why don't you – "

Tommy catches something out of the corner of his eye, and he walks toward it out of instinct, ignoring the blond guy. Somebody else moves in the cluster of people around the far practice ring, and now he sees – it's Frank and Marco sparring. He finds a hole in the small crowd and looks through it, watching the dance. It _looks_ like a dance anyway, looks like those carefully choreographed fight scenes in Chinese movies, hand strikes and kicks flowing with grace, and he realizes this is just a demonstration. It isn't a serious fight, and Frank is even smiling as he says something encouraging to Marco, just as he changes tack and sweeps Marco's feet from under him. Marco falls hard to the mat, and Frank's on him, bending Marco's leg back to an impossible position that Marco's really struggling to get out of, and the crowd of gym rats is yelling in excitement when Marco finally gives up and taps out.

God, this is such a thrill. It's a whole step, or maybe two steps, up from the competition at Russo's, which is nothing to sneeze at, and Tommy thinks,_ I need this kind of challenge. I need the adrenaline rush._ He's been looking forward to Saturday's fight, but just being here at Soul of a Lion is almost as good.

Frank gets up from the mat, accepting congratulations and pats on the back and high fives, and then he sees Tommy. He takes a towel out of someone's offering hand and wipes his face, and then he points at Tommy and orders, "_You_. Tape up. Then get in here."

The thought crosses Tommy's mind that Frank's maybe on a roll and would like to get in a good couple of strikes at him, to pay him back for that shove. Well, okay. He probably deserves that. "Yeah, Coach. Not warmed up, though."

"Twenty minutes from now, then," Frank says, and steps out through the ropes. "Got something to do and then I'll be back."

Tommy nods. As Frank goes into the locker area, some of the guys come over and high-five him too – _Hey, Tommy! You're back!, good to see you, man, watch out, Frank's gonna take ya head off, where ya been, man?_ Dante, who used to play football, gets him in a headlock and pretends to break his neck, and then lets him go. But everybody is smiling. Everybody is apparently happy to see him.

Marco, finishing a bottle of water, comes over and throws an arm around his shoulder. "Where you _been_, dude?"

"Around," Tommy says, not wanting to get into it.

Marco, oblivious as usual, plows on. "You back? Please_ God_, tell me you're back. Frank's been workin' my ass off. I need you to take some of the heat off!" He's probably half kidding, Tommy knows, but still. Nice to be missed.

"We'll see. Gotta go tape and get warmed up."

"I'll tape you if you want," Marco offers, and Tommy says sure. While they're sitting still, Tommy's hands stretched out one at a time while Marco winds the tape around his fingers, Marco talks about a bazillion things, only some of which Tommy really hears. Like, Marco met this really_ fiiiiiine_ girl at the amusement park, and she's got this sweet little Camaro she lets Marco drive. (Tommy's not sure whether Marco's talking about the actual Camaro, or whether he means she's letting Marco drive _her_.) And Jose's wife has a tumor on her stomach that might be cancer, but they're not really sure, and she's gonna have it removed next week. Meanwhile, Jose is taking time off to be with her and the kids.

When he's done taping, Tommy thanks him and picks up a jump rope, as the quickest way to get warm. While he's still jumping, Frank comes back into the gym proper and watches him, hands on hips. After a few minutes, when Tommy's forehead has started to bead up with sweat, he points at Tommy and then at the ring.

Frank looks grim, and Tommy's sure he's still pissed off. Well, fine. As long as Frank doesn't break anything of Tommy's, he's welcome to throw down some hurt. Maybe some humiliation. From Frank, he'll take it. He deserves it.

Tommy shoves in his mouthguard and comes over to the ring, still loosening up his shoulders and his neck, and as the music – _more damn Beethoven_ – starts, he steps in, wary of Frank's grim face. They circle for a few minutes, Frank taking swipes at him and Tommy letting him get close but not close enough to make contact. And suddenly Tommy realizes he's breathing in time with the music, relaxed and confident he can take anything Frank pitches at him, and he smiles without meaning to, right before Frank rushes him with a flurry of blows that he blocks easily. He doesn't feel like hitting Frank, he wants Frank on the mat instead, but as long as Frank wants to swing at him he'll allow it. Frank's got some tricky kicks, but Tommy's still faster, so he dodges them.

There's some yelling going on outside the ring, but it's not as important as hearing the music so Tommy tunes it out – he tunes out everything except the music and his awareness of Frank, reading Frank's next move in his eyes if possible, keeping his respiration steady and his guard up, just waiting for Frank to screw up and let Tommy take him down.

When the five-minute buzzer goes, Tommy immediately backs off. Frank's gonna get winded quicker than he will, he knows; maybe he should take him down soon and let Frank have at him with those tricky wrestling moves. Somebody presses a bottle of water into his hand, so he drinks some of it, not letting his eyes leave Frank.

There's something new in Frank's face – something sharp and aware, something predatory, and for the first time ever Tommy's got a sense of what Frank must have been like in the cage in his prime. Formidable. The cleverness, the will, the moves, Frank must have had it all, so how come he was never a big name? Brendan will know the history, he'll ask Brendan. But seeing Frank now is still amazing.

Rest period's up, and the round bell sounds again. Tommy moves to the center of the ring in a defensive position. "Lazy," Frank says, shaking his head, and for two seconds he turns into Mean Drunk Pop, supervising Tommy's weightlifting regimen from a chair in the basement, with a beer in his hand. Tommy sucks in a good breath and blows it out, _that's not Pop_, and Frank is Frank again, with a glint of humor in his eye. _Now he's gonna get me riled, if he can,_ Tommy thinks, and almost smiles. _Can't get me that way, Frank._

As long as Tommy is letting Frank be the aggressor, he doesn't have to make a mistake. But Frank seems to be catching on to that strategy, because he stops testing Tommy with strikes and kicks. Well, all right then, Tommy will pick up the gauntlet. He kicks out at Frank's thigh, fast, and connects. Frank stumbles but regains his balance, looking himself but fiercer. Tommy works on him, not hitting hard, and Frank seems to notice; he jabs for Tommy's face and Tommy jukes to the side, then swings a leg at Frank's knee. Frank stumbles again, and Tommy takes him down to the mat, going for a hold to Frank's knee similar to the one Frank trapped Marco in. "No," Frank says, and he's a little breathless, and Tommy knows then that he could take Frank any time he wants.

Instead, he relaxes his arm about a centimeter, and Frank's out of the hold, and Tommy can't help it, he grins.

Frank sees it. Like a flash, he's on Tommy trying to pin him into an armbar, and he had no idea Frank was that_ fast_, but Tommy twists away and flips Frank over, pins him again, goes for a chokehold. Keeps Frank in it for thirty seconds and then lets go. Lets Frank get him into a leg hold and stays there. Frank can have this one. When it starts to hurt, he taps and the whole room, it sounds like, roars.

Frank is out of breath and sweaty and Tommy can't stop grinning. Damn, that was _so much fun. _Beethoven plays on. Frank stands up, points a hard finger at him and says, "My office. Now."

Oh shit. Time to grovel, as Jen says.

He hops up, takes his water bottle from somebody, and follows Frank into the office. Frank closes the office door behind them, and Tommy thinks, _I have been here before_, as Frank tosses him a towel and takes one himself. "Okay," Frank starts. "Talk to me. Whaddya want? Why are you here?"

His mouth is dry, so he drinks some water and tries to think through what he wants to say. But as usual, all he can do is just spit it out. It's that or silence with him, that's just how he is. Brendan's got the way with words. "I fucked up." Frank raises his eyebrows but he doesn't react otherwise, so Tommy goes on. "I really fucked up, leaving here and... you know, shoving you around. I know it might not make any difference, but I wanted to tell you I'm sorry about that." He pauses for a second, trying to find some good way to say it, but there isn't any. "And I wondered whether you might let me come back. Which I know I don't deserve, but... I'm asking. All you can do is say no and call the police."

Frank shakes his head, and then he makes this sort of ironic snorting noise. "Call the police. God, Tommy. Like I'm gonna call the police on you."

"You could. That was aggravated assault." It's not like he never spent a night in the drunk tank, though it's been years since then.

"You_ want_ me to, or something?" Frank seems puzzled.

"No. I want to fix it up. If I can. If you'll let me."

"Could you pass a drug test?" Frank wants to know. "Any alcohol use? Steroids? Illegals?"

"Had three beers yesterday. At lunch. Just that one time, and one Percocet about a month ago. You tell me whether I could pass it, but I think so."

"Well, you're gonna get tested," Frank informs him. "You have to be clean and stay clean, you need to watch your diet, you need to keep up with the training." Tommy just nods again. No problem. "And you have to do what Frank says. Period. No questions."

"No problem, Coach." Easy.

"And you have to go to therapy."

"_What!?_ No fucking way."

"Might as well walk out now, then, Tommy." Frank's giving him the stabby bird-of-prey look. "I'm dead serious. If you don't deal with it, you are a ticking time bomb and you're going to hurt someone. Maybe yourself, maybe someone else... but _not on my watch_."

Well, shit.

"Look, I got some options for you." Frank gets off the desk and goes around to the back to root in a drawer. "I dug up some recommendations for sports psychiatrists, and there are at least two who specialize in treating war vets, the ones with stars by their names. You pick. It might take awhile for you to find somebody you feel comfortable with, and if none of them work, we'll go find some other possibilities. But you are gonna see somebody."

"Who's payin' for this?" Tommy gripes. He doesn't have the money to, and he doesn't have insurance. Therapy doesn't grow on trees, either.

"Who do you _think?_" Frank says.

_Damn, I owe my big brother __**more**__ money_, Tommy thinks sourly.

"And don't argue with me about it," Frank goes on. "He didn't want you to know that, and I could have lied, but honestly, Tommy, the man has guilt about the way you guys grew up, and if you can help him get past that by dealing with your issues, you damn well ought to. He deserves that."

Tommy looks down at the carpet, chewing on his upper lip. Yeah, okay, Brendan deserves that. He nods.

"And one more thing," Frank says. "You took a fall out there in the ring just now. You could've kicked my ass five different ways, by my count, and you kept letting the chance go by. I don't know if you thought it would make me more likely to take you on again, but if you _ever _pull that shit on me again, you will sorely regret it."

He looks mad, but there is something in Frank's eyes behind the fire, something almost brotherly – and something proud. It's a look he's seen on Brendan a lot, and, if he thinks about it, something he saw on Manny's face too.

So he tells Frank the truth, and he can't quite keep the smile in. It sneaks out without his meaning to let it. "It was kinda fun."

"You were playin' me, huh?" Frank doesn't sound too mad now.

"It was fun watchin' you dance for real," Tommy tells him. "Never saw it before."

Frank brushes that off. "You spar a lot at Russo's?"

Tommy blinks. How did Frank know he was at Russo's? "I don't think I said I was at Russo's. And they're not training a middleweight right now, so no, I didn't spar much."

Frank smiles. It's one of his "I want you to think about it" smiles, where he's just waiting for you to figure something out.

"You knew I was at Russo's," he says, slowly, remembering something Jen had said, about the drug testing being new. Then he remembers Lou slowing him down, keeping him from pushing too hard in his workouts. He'd been trying to scale back on his own, but Lou had kept a tight rein on him. "That's why..." Frank lifts his eyebrows encouragingly. "That's why the drug tests. That's why Lou wouldn't let me go too hard." Tommy doesn't know what to think about this. If Frank knew where he was, had Brendan known?

Frank, finally, nods. "Yeah. Couple days after you took off, I put the word out to as many guys as I could – mostly here, but I got some contacts in other places too – to look out for you, make it easy for you to slip in. I knew you didn't have to be here, but that you needed to be somewhere you could have somebody monitoring your CK levels."

There's a little burn of annoyance at the back of Tommy's head. He hadn't been completely on his own?

Frank opens the top drawer of his filing cabinet, and pulls a folder out. He hands it to Tommy, and Tommy opens it. There are four paper-clipped stacks of paper in it, medical papers. He glances through them, reading bits here and there: _CONLON THOMAS R_ and _Blood Alcohol Level 0.0%_ and _July 5_ and _Blood type O+_ and _CK level 390 trending down_. Four weeks' worth of finger sticks and pee-in-a-cup here, and Frank had them. He shakes his head, puzzled and a little snarked.

"I wouldn't let Brendan come get you," Frank says, sitting back down on the desk. "I figured you needed to make the decision on your own of whether you were going to come back, without any of the rest of us who care about you _making _you come back. Even though it was driving Brendan nuts worrying about you, I told him he needed to have a little faith in you. Was I wrong, Tommy?"

Tommy blinks, thinking about it. He gets up, and paces a little around the office, trying to figure things out.

"It's not like I've never been wrong before. But I still think you needed to be on your own, where we could sort of monitor you from a distance and support you if necessary."

"So you put Lou up to taking me in," Tommy says, trying to wrap his head around this.

"No, no, I just told him to be on the lookout. But he _was_ pretty excited about it," Frank says. "He had seen you fight at the Sunday Slammer, remember?"

"What about Jen? Inviting me to sleep on her couch, I mean."

It's Frank's turn to blink and look surprised. "You mean one of the girls that trains at Russo's? No. None of us had anything to do with that. I just made Lou aware that you had a tendency to overtrain, and that you probably needed your CK levels checked." He pauses a moment. "And that you are an incredible fighting machine, not that he needed to hear that from me."

Tommy nods, starting to see his big brother's hand behind Frank's sneaky plan. _Faith in me_. And Frank had been right, he'd needed to be on his own to decide that he'd be better facing whatever came along instead of running.

"You wanna go hit the bag a little?" Frank asks. "Those bags they got at Russo's are crap. Probably been there sixty years."

Tommy has to laugh. Once again Frank is right. Yeah, he's missed the bags here. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to tackle that foam-and-water one over in the corner again."

"All right then," Frank says. "Let's get moving. Move or die."

All afternoon, Tommy's thinking about the ways that people in his life have been covering his backside lately. From a distance, sometimes, but close enough to know when he needs help and when he doesn't. _My brother is a prince_, he thinks. _And maybe he's making up for when he wasn't there for me, but I can't say that he isn't there for me now. _

He can't think about it long, because it makes his throat close up with emotion. _Brendan missed me. He wanted to come get me. Frank knew I'd come home. So did Tess. _

Knowing that people had been behind him, even with them knowing some of his personal business, is making him feel... connected. And grateful. The funny thing is, he swears he's hitting the bag harder today, and it feels easy. Like it's not just himself directing blows at the bag – it's everyone behind him, all their weight added to his.

It's a little like having brothers in the Corps. Which he misses like hell. Being part of a group, knowing that he would never fall unnoticed... he blinks tears out of his eyes again and goes back to the bag with fresh perspective, hitting hard with a soft heart.

**A/N: One step closer to home. **

**But Kelly has been sad. And hurt. And mad. She might have kept her temper the other day, but how long will that last?**


	42. Ch 42: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

**Chapter 42: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back**

Just when she thinks she's gotten used to him being gone, there he is, sitting at Tess' table with his head turned toward Brendan, and she knows she's still as lost as ever. Because Tommy Conlon, clean-shaven in a navy tee-shirt and holding a little girl on his lap, is almost as sexy as a sweaty, shirtless, stubbled, tattooed Tommy Conlon mowing her backyard.

Which is to say, _extremely_ sexy.

And while her eyes devour him, her brain tick-tocks away with _not mine not mine not mine_, reminding her of the truth. She says some platitude and she backs out fast, not meeting anyone's eyes, so that no one will know how close she is to losing it.

But this time, on the way to work, she doesn't cry the way she did when he'd called Brendan and not her. This time, he already feels so distant that his not letting her know he was coming back is just what she expected. And it hurts, but not like before: she's already realized what a disaster it had been, how much it had been trouble in the making.

The workday is just another day, until her mother calls the orthopedists' office in a panic. June, the receptionist, actually buzzes back to the nurses' station and tells Kelly it's an emergency, so she picks up Line 4 to hear her mother's sobs. "What's wrong, Mama?"

Her mother is sick with some kind of stomach bug – fever, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea – and she feels horrible. Which is bad enough, but Fred has the same thing, and neither one of them can get out of the bed to take care of the other one, and they're both miserable. Mama wants her to come and stay for a few days.

Kelly talks Mama into calling a neighbor in the meantime and asking her to bring by some saltine crackers and ginger ale. (Those are staples that Kelly always,_ always_ has on hand. But it's been a long time since Mama had a child in the house.)

Kelly gets off the phone and makes arrangements to take the rest of the week off. Part of her compensation package includes a week's vacation; she'd rather not take it all now, but at least the next few days she can help her mother out. If she's back on Friday, they'd love to have her come in to assist with two outpatient surgeries, but it's not necessary. She calls Tess and asks if Tess can keep the boys while she's gone, offering to pay her extra, but Tess insists absolutely not. Between them, they plan that Kelly will zip home after work, pack, grab the clothes the boys will need for the rest of the week, and drop them off on her way out of town. Kelly feels better with a plan. And she's worried about her mom, but at least now she'll be too busy to think about Tommy making love to someone who isn't her.

At 5:20 she finishes updating her patient files and dives into her car for the half-hour drive home. She cleans the fridge out, eats a hasty dinner of leftovers, calls her neighbor Tamera and asks her to put the trash out on Wednesday morning, and dashes upstairs to pack. The boys backpacks are first, and they're easy; she's done in a flash. While she is tossing her own clothes (scrubs, shorts, and tees, mostly) into a suitcase, she runs across Tommy's blue tee-shirt, which she finally had shoved into her underwear drawer a couple of weeks ago. It still smells like him – only faintly, but that little bit is enough to bring back to her the feel of his skin on hers, his lips on hers, and the way her head fits his shoulder.

Damn damn damn. _Let him go,_ she counsels herself for the millionth time.

She dashes to Brendan and Tess' house, looking forward to the goodbye hugs from her sons and hoping that she can keep it together in front of Tommy. Lets herself in and drops the boys' backpacks on the living room floor, then yells, "Hey, I'm here!" Martin's the first person in, and he launches himself right at her stomach.

"Mommy!" he exclaims. "You going to Meemaw's?"

"Yes, honey, she's sick. Want to give me a hug for her?" So he hugs her tight again and then plants a big smacker of a kiss on her face. "The kiss is for MeeMaw too?"

"Yeah. Bring me somethin'."

"Maybe," she tells him. She can bring him a grocery-store candy bar, or some popcorn.

"Me too, Mommy," Jack says, and hugs her as well.

She hugs back. "Gonna miss you guys. Be good for Miss Tess, okay?"

"Did you bring my monkey pajamas?" Jack wants to know, and she nods.

Tess comes in to hug Kelly too. "You be careful, girl. And take care of your mom. You got a new phone yet, so you can call me?"

"Not yet. I'll call you from Mama's, and I'll try to get a phone when I can."

Tess squeezes her one more time and lets go. When she looks up, Tommy's standing just inside the door, looking at her with those ocean-dark eyes full of something she can't identify. Maybe apology, maybe hunger. She's not sure. She waves, and then she's out the door.

She's in Wilkes-Barre by 9:30 pm, swinging by the grocery store for anti-nausea meds, ginger ale and saltines (as well as 1% milk and shredded wheat cereal for herself, since she doesn't know what Mama has in her fridge) and then pulling into Mama's driveway by 10. Almost immediately she's on full-time nursing duty, giving Fred an emesis basin and some ginger ale to sip. Carbonation isn't all that great for you, but ginger does help with nausea. Mama's asleep in what used to be Noah's room, thank goodness. She'll check on Mama in a couple of hours. Meanwhile, she makes up the bed in her own old room, and gets a box fan out of the closet so she won't suffocate in the 78F temperatures that Mama and Fred prefer.

And now that she's got a moment to herself, she turns on Mama's ancient computer and waits for it to boot up. When the internet connects, she checks her email and sends a message to the nurse supervisor at work that she's now at her mother's and can be reached by phone or email. While she's on the internet she researches cell phone plans, hoping to upgrade to a phone with more reliable service. The little prepaid phone has been adequate, but barely, and she's already nearly exhausted the minutes she's paid for already. In fact, there are less than 30 minutes of service left on the phone.

Shortly after midnight she checks on Mama, who is feverish but not nauseous. She kisses her mother on the forehead, sets the alarm in her old room for 3 am, and goes to bed exhausted.

The next two days go much the same, with her providing round-the-clock nursing care for her mother and stepfather. She cleans the house and does some laundry, she cooks soft food like homemade applesauce and mac-and-cheese, she goes to the grocery store for bananas and more ginger ale. She calls Tess every day after lunch so she can say hello to the boys and Mama can have some grandmother time with them on the phone.

On Tuesday afternoon she calls Joe Gilhooley, explains the situation, and reschedules their coffee date – for Friday evening if she can be home, Sunday afternoon if Friday won't do. She'll call him on Friday. And, he suggests, if it would be easier in terms of babysitting, they can take the boys and get ice cream instead. She hangs up the phone feeling more cheerful about her week: Joe's so _nice_.

By Thursday afternoon Fred's feeling much better, and the general consensus is that he can take care of Mama just fine at this point, so she tosses her stuff into her suitcase and makes meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner. She calls Tess and her work supervisor to tell them that she's coming home, and kisses her mother goodbye.

On the way she stops in at the cell phone store and sets up a new contract – a basic phone on a basic talk-and-text plan, with a new number. She'll have to input all her contacts again, but that's okay. Instead of porting over her old number, which she never liked anyway, she chooses everything new. When she calls Tess to give her the new number, Tess offers to just run the boys home so they can be in bed when Kelly gets home. Which sounds great to her. Two hours on the interstate isn't that long, but it's no fun either, and it's close to 9pm when she hits the city limits.

As she's pulling into her driveway she notices that someone has cut her grass today, and her first leaping thought is Tommy, her mind full of the torturingly gorgeous memory of him sweaty and beautiful on her back steps. Then she realizes he's hardly likely to be mowing her grass when he's sleeping with someone else. She jumps out of the Corolla and grabs her suitcase from the trunk, lugging it up to the front door and pulling her house key out of her pocket, but Tess opens it for her.

"So your mom's better?" Tess says, hugging her. "I'm so glad you're home." She holds Kelly at arm's length and looks at her more closely. "Look here, sweetie, I sort of jumped at the chance to come and talk to you for once. You've been duckin' me for weeks."

Kelly can't help it, she flushes pink. She knows she's been avoiding Tess. What's she going to tell her, _I harbor unholy and pointless desires for your brother-in-law? _Even if it's true, how does she explain that to Tess?

"So tell me what's going on," Tess says, and the tone of her voice tells Kelly she's not going to brook any further evasion.

Kelly sighs. "I don't want to tell you the details. I'm sorry, Tess, I just..."

"It's embarrassing?" Tess asks empathetically, leading Kelly over to the couch to sit down. Kelly nods. "It has to do with a guy, doesn't it?"

Well, that much she can say. "Yes. And it was a total disaster, and it's over, and I do not want to discuss it, okay?"

"Is he a jerk? Did he break your heart? Because I'll go kick his butt for you, you know I would."

The mental picture of Tess smacking Tommy around is actually pretty funny, and Kelly laughs.

"Oh good, you laughed." Tess sounds relieved. "Because you have not been yourself lately and it was really starting to scare me, and on top of Tommy being gone and Brendan worried sick, it's just been way too much drama."

"I'm doing better," Kelly tells her. Because she is. The therapy is helping a lot, making her look at what scares her and what she wants and what she needs and how she thinks. There is still an enormous ache when she thinks of Tommy and everything she wanted from a relationship with him, but she's started to see that either he gets better or there is no hope for it. "And I did just meet someone recently that I might like to date. Nice guy. I'll bring him by and let you meet him sometime. – Oh, don't worry," she assures Tess. "I'll go slowly. _Slooowly_. No more whirlwind, ill-advised romances."

"So when was this whirlwind thing?" Tess wants to know. "Had to have been Father's Day weekend, right? I've seen you every weekend since then, and I don't see you abandoning the boys on a weeknight to go shag some guy."

"Yeah. Father's Day weekend. And then it was over. Just didn't work out. I'm okay, Tess."

"But was he good in bed?" She doesn't intend to answer, but without meaning to, Kelly shivers. "Aha, he was!" Tess laughs out loud. "At least you had some fun, right?"

"That part was pretty awesome," Kelly confesses. "Now listen, Tess, I'm not talking any more about him. Really. Really, really not. And I need to get some sleep if I'm going to make it to work tomorrow."

"Okay, sweetie," Tess says, reluctantly, and gets up. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Yes. In the morning."

Tess leaves and Kelly locks up, turns out the lights, lugs her suitcase upstairs. It's becoming clear to her that although her house had been fairly clean when she left, someone has definitely cleaned it while she was gone. She brushes her teeth, washes her face, strips off her clothes. When she gets a nightgown out of her drawer, there's that blue tee-shirt again, and she gets a little flash of what it had been like to sleep in Tommy's shirt, the cotton soft against her skin and his arms tight around her... and the way he'd woken her up that day, with kisses and his fingers gentle and insistent on her secret places, and then the heat of him hard inside her, his voice breathless and raspy with lust in her ear.

_Let him go_, she reminds herself for the millionth-and-one time. But her dreams are full of him anyway.

Friday morning when she drops off the boys, Tommy tackles her at her car and says he wants to talk to her. But buoyed by what her therapist said about not hanging out with people who hurt you, she rebuffs him – probably harder than she needs to, because his face goes pale enough for the six freckles on his nose to stand out, and she knows he's hurt too.

Well. _Serves him right_, she thinks, ignoring the insidious poking of her conscience, the thing that says, _That wasn't fair, he should have the chance to talk if he wants_. No. Screw it. She is not doing this again, she is not setting herself up to be crushed again. Especially not with a really nice guy offering her and her two sons ice cream this evening.

She plows through the mountain of patient files that's awaiting her at work, not thinking of Tommy's eyes dark and pleading on hers this morning. Every time the image arises she banishes it with a mental picture of Joe Gilhooley's dimpled grin, and by the time she picks up the boys, shortly before six, she's banished Tommy's face successfully at least a good dozen-dozen times.

Joe rings her doorbell at 8pm, standing cool and collected and smiling on the porch, wearing a red plaid casual button-down shirt and khakis, Innocent Fun from head to toe. She invites him in and introduces Jack and Martin, telling them that she went to college with Joe.

Joe hits the usual grownup-meets-kids questions, like age and grade and school, and the boys, visibly bored, answer politely. And then Joe hits a sweet spot with his next question. "You guys like ice cream?"

Jack nods shyly, and Martin yells, "Yeah!"

"What's your favorite flavor?" Joe asks, and Martin immediately claims chocolate. "How about you, Jack?"

Jack confesses that he likes butter pecan. It's a weird choice for a kid, but Jack isn't shy about the foods he likes. "Me too," Kelly says. It's true, she likes butter pecan and cherry vanilla – it's not that she doesn't like chocolate, but it's not her favorite. She likes chunks of _stuff _in her ice cream: nuts, bits of fruit, chocolate chips.

"I like vanilla," Joe says. "But with lots of sprinkles."

Kelly suggests they take her car to Bassett's, so she won't have to move Martin's booster seat, and Joe is agreeable, so they take off for Chestnut Street and the best ice cream in Philly. When they've ordered, and settled at a table with their cones (Joe insisted on buying), Martin falls right into single-minded eating, and between bites Jack watches Kelly and Joe talk, his eyes bouncing back and forth as if he's watching a tennis match. They reminisce some about college.

"Remember that time Dr. Joness got into the wine at that dinner concert?" Joe asks, and Kelly cracks up.

"_Yes!_ And he was so plastered he was making these weird little hissing noises while he was directing!"

"I thought he was gonna pass out," Joe says, laughing.

"What about the time he gave us the wrong pitch for that a capella piece? There was this collective gasp of horror as we all realized it was three steps too high, and then you could feel all the tenors panic..."

"Oh, God, yes," Joe says, "We all thought we were never going to hit that note, we thought we were gonna _die_, and then it turned out to be the best performance ever. Probably because we were all scared to death."

"Did you hit it?" Kelly wants to know.

Joe flashes his dimples again. "Had to go into falsetto, but it was on key at least."

Jack eats butter pecan and Martin's nose-deep into his chocolate cone, while half of Joe's cone melts enough to drip down his hand. Kelly's English Toffee Crunch is good, but a little too sweet, and something in the back of her throat keeps closing up; she doesn't know why. She's having a good time, but she feels very lonely somehow.

They chat a little about mutual friends, and then some about their lives. Joe's work schedule is nominally days, but frequently his work hours stretch into the evening and sometimes, on a specific case, can be ridiculously long. Kelly confesses to missing the ER. He asks about the boys' father, delicately, and she answers, delicately. Asks him whether he's ever been married, and it turns out the answer is yes, he married his high school sweetheart but it only lasted four years. No kids.

"She's in Boston now," Joe says. "Raising a whole litter of legal opinions instead of kids." He nods toward Martin, who is chocolate to the eyebrows and completely oblivious. "That was one of the reasons we broke apart. She wanted a serious career – and I also think that once she was done with law school she was embarrassed by having a cop husband."

"That seems dumb to me," Kelly tells him, and hands Martin a napkin. She smiles at Jack, who has finally finished his butter pecan and cleaned his own face.

It's a good conversation, and yet Kelly's done with it by the time she realizes Martin really ought to be in bed, even for a Friday night. On the way back, she mentions that she needs to get the boys in bed, and Joe catches on quick. As they're pulling in to her tiny driveway, he says, "Well, I'll wish you a good night now. I'd love to see you again soon. Dinner maybe? Or there's a '1964 as the Beatles' concert on Wednesday next week – I love those guys."

"Me too," Kelly says, lighting up. "I'd like that. And thanks for the ice cream, I had a blast. Boys? What do you say?"

"Thank you, Mr. Gilhooley," Jack says, and his normal little Jack glow is missing too. Martin, thank goodness, is stoked from the chocolate and too excited to do anything but echo Jack's thank-you.

"You boys go up and brush your teeth," Kelly tells them. "I'll be up to check on you in a few minutes." She's intending to merely hug Joe, but his delightful grin makes her think she really ought to see whether he's fun to kiss. So she shoos them inside and turns back to Joe, stepping a little closer. "I had a lovely time."

"So did I." And he leans over and kisses her.

It's nice. A gentle, exploring sort of kiss, a "how do you feel about me?" sort of kiss, and Kelly's body responds to it. Not with the immediate, thunderous, take-me-now sort of passion she's felt with Tommy, but enough that she knows it wouldn't be a complete waste of time for either her or Joe. There's a spark.

She steps away from the spark before it can grow. "I should probably tell you," she says to Joe, "that I just got... dumped. And I'm sort of heartburned over it. I mean, it was fast, and hardly anybody besides me and the guy know about it, but we rushed it. We let it go too fast and we weren't ready. Or _he _wasn't, or something."

Joe blinks.

"Which I mention because I would want to take take things very slow," she explains, and he relaxes.

"Slow is okay with me," he says. "But maybe one more kiss?" She smiles and leans up to kiss him this time, and it's really pretty good. Really, it's pretty good. It's not doing much for that hole in her heart, but at least the kissing was nice. Pretty good. "I'll call you," he says, and she nods.

"Good night."

Joe heads off in his silver Sentra, and Kelly turns out the porch light and locks up the house. She does not happen to notice the dark figure in a sleeveless hoodie standing just across the street, near a streetlight but not in its aura of light; she does not see the figure turn and walk away.

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 *

"So, you'll be there?" Tommy asks Brendan over breakfast on Friday.

"_Absolutely_, I'll be there," Brendan says, swallowing the last of his coffee. "Wild horses, man. Saturday?"

"Tomorrow, yeah. Fights start at 8," Tommy confirms.

"This thing sounds like a done-on-the-cheap sort of deal," Brendan says, brow furrowed. "Like those smokers I used to work – in strip joint parking lots, no dressing rooms and no medical personnel."

"Two EMTs, I was told." Lou had set this one up for him, and it's not as well-organized as the Sunday Slammer Frank had gotten him into, but this one is bigger and more commercial: four fights, welterweight to super-heavyweight, $250 to each class winner. Lou says the organizer's out to make a profit, and there will be a cover charge and a full bar in the building. So it's a way rougher crowd, and likely rougher fighting. Three three-minute rounds each fight, and Lou had said that the promoter hated quick KO's unless they were really bloody.

"Bet the security sucks. But yeah. I'll be there."

"I can't," Tess says apologetically. "I promised to help Ann-Marie Salyards with Jayda's birthday party." Brendan nods, and Tess explains to Tommy, "Twelve eight-year-olds and a Dexter's Laboratory theme. She's insane, but I owe her because she organized the carpool for karate." When she sees Tommy's absolute befuddlement (_Dexter's Laboratory? Carpool? WTF?_), she smiles and says, "Never mind, it doesn't matter. I'll make it to the next one, I swear."

"It's okay," Tommy tells her. Women still make no sense to him. Jen would never have said anything like that, he's sure. On the other hand, Jen doesn't even want kids, so of course she wouldn't be talking about kids' birthday parties. A mental picture of Kelly and the boys at the Star City Grille swims into his mind, and he pushes it away.

"I'll see who we can round up," Brendan says.

"Thanks." Tommy finishes his coffee too, and gets up from the table. He's planning to catch Kelly when she drops off the boys, which should be any minute, so he goes and brushes his teeth. He's _seen_ her since he came back to Brendan's, but she's still not answering either one of her phones when he calls, and when she sees him she backs off as fast as she can. Not being able to talk to her is fucking killing him. He needs her, bad, needs to talk to her. Needs to tell her how sorry he is, how stupid he was, how much he loves her.

He's hanging out in the living room at the front of the house with his gym bag, ready to go, when Kelly's blue Corolla pulls in. She gets out and frees Martin from the seatbelt over his booster seat, and hugs the boys, and starts to get back in the car, telling them, "Go on in," and Tommy makes a move. He holds the door open for Jack and Martin and then goes out himself.

He's right by her car before she has a chance to put her own seatbelt back on, knocking on the window so she'll roll it down. When she does, he leans in and says, "Look, I need to talk to you."

"I'm kind of busy these days," she says. Level voice. Level gaze. She's not giving him _anything_, it's like she's a whole other person, security like Fort Knox. It's not like her. That shit Mike had better fucking well not be messing with her again. Or, God forbid, the guy last night... though Tommy's pretty sure he could take that guy, no sweat.

"Please, Kelly," he says, and for the first time her eyes flicker. "There are things I need to explain. I miss you so bad."

"Just because you need to say them doesn't mean I need to hear them," she says, not bitchy but firm. It's the voice she uses for Mike, and that hurts like hell. She's protecting herself from _him_. "I'm running late, I need to go."

"_Kelly,_" he protests, not quite believing that she's just going to leave. But she does. She puts the car in gear and backs out of the driveway, not looking at him. Well, _fuck_. How the hell is he supposed to apologize (_grovel_, Jen said) when she won't talk to him? Won't listen, won't stick around, won't answer her phone? Is he gonna have to go over there and bang her door down?

She'd probably call the cops. Which would make her even less likely to listen to him, and that's the only reason he hasn't already done it.

So he's already pissed off when he gets to the gym, and he's pushing himself a little through the workouts when Frank comes over and taps him on the arm. "What?" he snarls at Frank over his shoulder, still working the speed bag.

Frank raises his eyebrows. "Seriously, you gonna talk to me like that?"

_Shit. _He drops his arms, suddenly ashamed of himself. Frank's done nothing to him, and he needs to quit taking out his bad moods on everybody else. That's Mean Drunk Pop behavior, and he can't do that anymore. "Sorry, Frank. Whadja want?"

"Knock it off over here and take a breather, okay? You're gonna push yourself too hard today if I don't sit on you. I'm starting to get a sense for what that looks like," Frank says, pointing to his eye. "Listen, you know, I was serious about that therapy thing."

"Got an appointment for next week," Tommy says. "Next Friday." He's not comfortable talking about it, but since Frank knows already, he guesses it's okay.

"Yeah, all right. Don't forget, okay? It's important, Tommy." Tommy nods while he's taking off the gloves. Frank points at him. "Water, 16 ounces. Rest, 15 minutes."

"Yes, Coach," he says. "Hey, Frank? How do you get somebody to listen to you when they don't want to?"

Frank, who's started to walk off, does a double-take and stares incredulously at him. Then he says, "Why are you askin' me?"

And Tommy grins. "'Cause you know how. I mean, lookit me. I'm here. You finally got me to listen."

Frank shakes his head, but he's smiling. "My office. Bring your water." When Tommy's closed the door behind them, Frank starts in. "Okay, so who is it that won't listen to you?"

Tommy takes a long drink from his water bottle before answering. He doesn't want to get that specific – Frank talks to Brendan on the sly about him, he figured that out awhile ago – but he does really want Frank's advice. "A girl." Frank waits. Gives him the come-on gesture with his hand, and Tommy goes on. "I hurt her pretty bad by going away, I think, and she's perfectly polite now but she won't talk to me. She won't answer her phone when I call her. I'd go over to her house, but given that she won't talk to me anywhere else I don't think she'll open the door."

"Ah. So she's still pretty mad, you think?" Tommy nods. "And maybe she's mad because she's hurt?"

"Well, yeah. But – " There's the other thing, too. "See, I saw her right before I came back. Out somewhere. And she was with this guy, this... old boyfriend of hers, and he's bad news. I'm kind of pissed off she's seeing him again. I mean, it's not just that she's mad at me, but she's doing something really stupid."

"Um-hm." Frank nods. "Think maybe she's seeing him _because _she's mad at you?"

Tommy blinks. "She's never seemed much like the revenge type. She's the stick-it-out type." He tries to imagine that again, Kelly wanting to hurt him, and it still doesn't fit. Not even after he told her to forget about him. "And anyway, I never meant to hurt her. It was partly – " he breaks off again. Is this too much information? He assumes Kelly still doesn't want anybody to know, or she'd have said something to Tess, at least.

"Spill it, brother," Frank says encouragingly.

"Okay, it was partly because I didn't want to hurt her that I left. It was that and a whole bunch of other stuff, but a lot of it was her." Frank keeps looking at him, waiting, and he sighs. God, what _is _it with him lately, he can't shut up. Spilling his guts all over the damn place. "I think if she understood, if she'd just let me explain, she'd be able to get past it."

"What did Brendan say?" Frank asks, and Tommy shakes his head.

"He doesn't know. And you cannot tell him, okay? I know you talk to him, but not about this."

Frank looks dubious. "Since you asked me to keep it dark, and it doesn't involve your safety, I can do that. I swear," he adds when he sees Tommy isn't convinced. "Why don't you want him to know?"

"He disapproves. Says she doesn't need my shit on top of hers."

"Ow," Frank says. "So he knows her, that's the deal?" Tommy nods. "This is the girl who was with you at the Sunday Slammer, right? She had a flashback at the fight. Jose was telling me."

Tommy nods again. God, this hurts. Why does everything hurt _so fucking much? _He's back now, things are supposed to be better. "Kelly," he says, and even saying her name is hard. It makes his voice scratchy, makes the heat come up in his ears. He misses her crazy.

"And she was willing to put up with 'your shit' for awhile, but now she's not?"

"Guess not."

"Huh. You know, women take it hard when you leave them," Frank says. "In general, when they get stressed they like to talk about it with other people. They don't get the whole man-cave thing, and when you need some space you have to tell them you'll be back or they go mental. Did you tell her you'd be back?"

"No. I wrote her and told her to forget about me because I'm so fucked up and I'd ruin her life."

Frank slaps a hand to his forehead. "Tommy. Really? _Seriously?_"

"Well, I did," he says defensively.

"And now she won't talk to you."

"She won't even let me get _close_ enough to talk to her." He bites his lower lip, and then tells Frank.

"You're screwed, man," Frank says. "Unless, maybe, you do something extravagant. Stand outside her house holding a boombox playing 'In Your Eyes,' or something. Sit on her front step and howl at the moon. Grab her by the ankles and beg her, 'Please don't leave me.'"

Now Frank's just making fun of him. "Suck it, Frank."

"I mean extravagant on that level. Think about it for awhile before you do it, though. Hey – finish that water."

Tommy drinks. "That's all you got?"

Frank spreads his hands in a what-can-ya-do gesture. "We have now exhausted my knowledge of women. Sorry. Now. You got some footwork drills with Jose and then some sparring with me later, so hop to it. And take it easy tomorrow, okay?"

"Sure, Coach."

The rest of the day passes by and over him, streaming past but not touching him. In his head, he's with Kelly, explaining, and she understands, and she forgives him. In his head, he's the one kissing her.

It will happen. It has to.

**A/N: It's Band Camp week, and I'm one of the chaperones. (My LORD, the draaaamaaaaa... I'm getting to the point where if I SEE a teenager, I feel like slapping her/him, just on general principles.**

**But anyway, I wanted to get this posted before the weekend, and then perhaps look for the next chapter by Monday. Love you all. Reviews make me write faster... so thanks in advance!**


	43. Chapter 43: The Fight

**Ch 43: The Fight**

**(A/N: sorry for the delay in posting. Hectic week last week – but here it finally is. BTW, this one might not be all that safe for work. You're surprised, right? Tell me you're surprised. **

**Kidding.)**

"**Whatever doesn't kill me...**

Saturday morning Tommy's out running, a light run of four miles instead of his usual seven, since he's got a fight tonight. His usual loop doesn't go anywhere near Kelly's house, but he keeps debating with himself, _Go to Kelly's/No, stay away/Go to Kelly's/No, she doesn't want you around. _It's so hard, thinking how he's screwed up.

He spends the morning hanging with Emily and Rosie, swinging them around in the yard and playing Chase. It's really good to laugh, and the hugs are sweet. Emily shows him a karate move or two, and Rosie begs him to play Frog Prince. So he pretends to be a frog for a few minutes, hopping around and ribbiting, and then Rosie kisses his head and he stands up to be the prince. He feels totally stupid doing it, but she's so happy, and he figures his dignity doesn't matter so much in the back yard. "Again!" Rosie begs.

"Two more times," he agrees. "Then we're done. And don't tell your dad, he'll make fun of me."

"You're a really good frog, Uncle Tommy," Emily says. "Your voice is sort of croaky." He has to laugh at that.

It's a good morning. After lunch Brendan takes him over to the gym and they spar a little, just half-speed and in pads and headgear. They spend a good half an hour working wrestling holds, Brendan pinning him and Tommy wriggling out.

"Just like old times," Brendan says as they knock off for the day, and cuffs Tommy gently across the back of the head.

"Aw, screw you, man," Tommy says, half teasing. It's been a strange feeling, wrestling with Brendan the way they used to when they were little – when Pop used to hone Tommy's skills by pitting him against his older, heavier brother. He feels a little bit like he's taking advantage of Brendan now. Though Bren doesn't really seem to mind. "Shit, I really gotta call Pop." He hasn't talked to Pop for weeks, and he's not sure why he hasn't felt like talking to him. It's something old he doesn't want to drag up and feel... maybe he'll talk to the counselor about it.

Kind of odd that he's looking forward to actually talking to the counselor. But he is.

After sparring, they head back to the house and shower, and Tommy takes a short nap. When he gets up, Brendan's in the kitchen on his iPhone, trying to talk somebody into coming to the fight. "You don't have to be there early, you can come over after your other thing. What is it? Oh, a baby shower." There's a short pause and he tries again. Well, Brendan's always been the one with the words. "Come on, girl, you know you really ought to. We ought to be there for Tommy. And you owe me, anyway."

Maybe it's Kelly. If anybody can talk her into anything, it's Brendan, with that big brother-little sister relationship they've got.

"I thought you said your head doctor recommended immersion therapy," Brendan says, and he's matter-of-fact. "You know, facing the thing that scares you a little bit at a time. And I'd be with you, making sure you're okay. I'll be lookin' out for you, little sis, you know I will. I swear." Then he laughs. "Yes, I pinky promise. God, what are you, _six_? You're worse than Emily." So it is Kelly. Tommy begins to hope. If she comes, maybe it means that she's over her mad and he can talk to her. She usually gets over her mads pretty quick.

Brendan's still talking to her, just chatting easy, and not for the first time, Tommy feels that old jealousy of what his brother has, gnawing at him. But he reminds himself, the way he's learned to do, that Brendan has earned what he has. He's _earned_ Tess, and the girls, and the college degree and the good job and the nice house. And he's earned Kelly's trust by never letting her down, dammit.

Tommy sighs. He already weighed in this morning, and Tess is right now making him some whole-wheat spaghetti with red sauce, turkey meatballs, and a bunch of veggies for early dinner before she takes off to ride herd on a bunch of eight-year-olds. "Hey, Tess? Thank you for cooking," he says. "Can I help do anything?"

"Sure – set the table for you and Bren, and then put the leftovers away when you're done. If there _are_ any leftovers," she teases. "I gotta wrap a present and get the girls ready to go. You go kick some butt, okay?"

Tess is pretty awesome.

And he's ready for this fight. He's ready to start kicking the ugly past in the ass, kicking it out of his head and down the road, and he might as well start with tonight's opponent. And then he's going to find Kelly and beg and plead and grovel, and when she finally listens, he's going to make love to her all night long.

**8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 **

**...only makes me stronger.**

Kelly sighs. "I'll try, Brendan. Okay? I can't promise more than that, but I'll try. I'm not leaving Mandy's baby shower early, and I'll get there when I get there." She's hoping not to get there in time, actually, but her conscience won't let her plan to skip out and then lie to Brendan later. Part of her head says that Tommy might not even notice her presence anyway, assuming that Jen would be there. So what if he said he's missed her? She's one of the few people he talks to and she figures it's that, the friend thing that they had before they had the sex thing. Besides which, she is absolutely not interested in being part of his damn harem, just one of the girls in line. She's not even the most recent one.

_Stop,_ she tells herself the way Dr. Lessinger has taught her. _Stop knocking yourself down with this. Mike's cheating was not really about you and you know it. And technically Tommy wasn't cheating at all._

"What?" Brendan says, sounding completely confused. "What cheating?"

"Nothing," she says. "I'm emailing a friend about some book we're both reading," she lies, and then she feels guilty about that too. Crap. "Sorry, that was rude. I'm going to send this message now and shut down my computer." More damn lies. She has to stop this. "Anyway, bro, I'll be there. Text me when it's about to start, okay?"

Brendan agrees, and she hangs up and goes back to doing the laundry.

She's already wrapped up her present for the baby shower, an adorable pair of baby pajamas in size 3-6 months and a pretty blanket. Mandy and Chris go to her church, and Mandy has been so helpful with Martin at kids' ministry that Kelly wants to help welcome Mandy's little one. It's an old-school baby shower: women only, at the church, with tea and cakes and little finger sandwiches. It starts at six, so presumably there's time for her to get over to the west part of town for this thing – but no time to change clothes. Oh well.

Tamera comes over to stay with the boys at 5:30, and Kelly hugs Jack and Martin before she heads out to the car, walking carefully down the steps because she's got her pink dress and her best black pumps on, the ones with the three-inch kitten heels. She's even got a little white sweater shrug on, in case it gets chilly later, and Mama's cultured pearls, and she feels just the tiniest bit like June Cleaver in that full-skirted, girly dress.

Not that June Cleaver wore pink lace bikinis, but still.

Well, maybe she did, Kelly muses as she carefully gets into the car, balancing on her heels and swinging the gift bag into the passenger seat. Maybe June needed some good fantasies about Ward just to keep from hanging herself with the vacuum cleaner cord... Heck, maybe June did the dishes with no underwear on at all.

She actually did her fingernails this morning, too: this really pretty grayed-blue color (NK's Charcoal Navy), with asymmetrical diagonal tips in silver metallic. It won't last, it'll be chipped by Monday afternoon unless she spends the time to do another topcoat before work, but for now it's lovely. Her toenails are still bright pink. And she'd had a hard time choosing a fragrance today – she'd wanted something floral and feminine, but not light and clean and innocent. She'd wanted something that said All Woman. The minute she'd said that to herself, she'd realized that she does indeed intend to make it to the fight, looking as girly and out of place as possible. And that made the fragrance choice easier: a big white floral, as Southern and ripe and lush as she can get, tuberose and jasmine and orange blossom and ylang-ylang. She'd dithered between Dior Poison and Lauder Private Collection Tuberose Gardenia, considered her small decant of Serge Lutens Datura Noir, and then finally gone for Parfums DelRae Amoureuse, with its green-leaves and nutmeg notes on top of honeyed blossoms. Two spritzes are plenty – one at the base of her neck, and another on one wrist, smeared to the other. No point in asphyxiating anyone, but she wants to be smelled within her personal space.

And now she understands why the careful makeup and the great shoes, the nails and the lace panties and the perfume. At least she can make him _sorry_, dammit. Jen might be gorgeous, but it ain't like Kelly's chopped liver, either. She fights back the sudden ache in her throat and pulls out into traffic.

The shower's really lovely, and Mandy is thrilled with all the goodies. Kelly eats a chicken salad puff, strawberries, and a cupcake iced with a cheerful yellow ducky and drinks hot tea, remembering how happy she'd been at thirteen to realize that someday she could have a baby of her very own, and how thrilling it had been to do that very thing. She thinks how wonderful it is to have the choice to have children or not, and how good it is that women are able to _decide_ whether they're going to be mothers or not.

She closes her eyes quick and asks God to bless Mandy and the baby. Even now, looking at baby feet just melts her – every time she sees one of those tiny, deliciously pink, curled up feet with toes the pearly sheen of budding grapes, she thinks how nice it would be to have another baby.

The shower is winding down at half past seven, and while she's helping clean up the paper plates and cups (all printed with those cheerful yellow duckies), Brendan texts her to remind her of the address of the fight. She sighs. Texts back, "Fine, I'm leaving in a few minutes."

The parking lot of the venue is full of pickups and SUVs and old beater cars, and most of the people going in are wearing jeans and tee-shirts – unless they are young attractive women, wearing fuck-me heels and tight miniskirts, because there are several of those. Brendan meets Kelly near the entrance and shows her the "friends and family" passes that get them half-price tickets and access to restricted areas. He's also bought her ticket, for which she's grateful – she's paying Tamera to babysit the boys. "Hey, you look nice," he says and pats her shoulder. "Way better than this crowd. Hope nobody spills beer on you."

When they go in, the floor is concrete and there are some metal folding chairs, but it's not nearly so well organized as the other fight she went to. Brendan explains that this event is more loosely structured, and she can expect rougher fighting. "No, no," he says before she can get nervous about it, "you'll be fine. You've seen worse in the ER. Hey, you want a beer or something?"

She asks for her usual bar favorite, a Tom Collins (gin please, not vodka), and turns back to the cage to look at it before things get really rolling. It's still this enormous eight-sided metal thing, intimidating and threatening. She sighs. Tries not to remember how sweet Tommy had been that day, the day of the other fight.

When Brendan comes back with a beer for himself, and her Tom Collins, she tries to distract herself with chatting about his girls, putting back her drink in mouthfuls instead of dainty sips. He sees people he knows, waves, introduces her as "my wife Tess' friend Kelly" and mentions that Tess couldn't be there, always careful that the people she's meeting don't get the wrong impression about them. Kelly's stopped wearing that silver COURAGE ring on her left hand; when she went to the movie with Mike and the boys she thought it might be better to take it off completely, but now it's back, just on her right hand. It helps. When she gets nervous she twists it, and thinks about being brave and getting healthy for her sons, and it really does help her focus.

Brendan explains a bunch of stuff to her, more cogently than Marco, but he still gets sidetracked by stuff she doesn't understand, and she keeps having to remind herself that the teacher she's always known came out of this world, that he knows it better than she could imagine – and the funnier part of that is that Tess must understand this world too. Tess would have been an enormous help tonight. The first fight is pretty technical, a bunch of kicks and all kinds of wrestling holds that Brendan tries to explain and Kelly just watches, not knowing who won until the judges' decision is announced. There isn't much violence with this one, but plenty of changes of the upper hand, so the crowd stays invested instead of booing. "That's the thing," Brendan explains. "People hate to watch an underdog just outlast a hold. It's boring. It was kind of my bread-and-butter when I was on the circuit, because I was good at it, but it's not fun to watch. Crowds like to see home runs instead of pitchers' duels, and they like to see punches rather than wrestling holds. But if the fighters are evenly matched it's slightly more interesting."

She nods, because when Brendan explains stuff it makes sense. He's such a good teacher.

When she goes to the bathroom after the first fight, there's a whole clutch of those girls with short tight dresses and too much eye makeup in front of the mirror, making it hard for her to wash her hands, and when she catches the eye of one of them who's taking a long time to return the entire contents of Sephora's makeup inventory to her bag, the girl sneers. "This ain't a tea party, bitch. It's not the seventh-grade dance, either. If you're here you should be dressed like a fan, or a fighter's girl." Kelly just rolls her eyes and ignores her long enough to make use of the sink, and then peek in the corner of the mirror long enough to reapply the strawberry-pink lip stain she usually wears with this dress.

When she comes back out, Brendan's on edge. "It's time," he says, unnecessarily, as the lights dim and the announcer calls out "Caaaseeeeey 'The Crusssshhherrrrr' Fiiinnegannnn!" in the manner of all announcers everywhere, and she goes up on her toes to look, holding on to Brendan's arm for balance. She's not prepared for it, for the way Tommy looks coming up out of the dark into the lights of the cage, like a magnificent beast, fierce and focused and _dangerous. _He's in black shorts tonight with black gloves, and it's a good thing so many people, including Brendan, are whistling and hooting to the accompaniment of "Sabotage," because she can't get a good breath and she's almost panting with excitement.

His opponent, when he steps into the ring, looks bigger than Tommy, and meaner too: a low brow and prominent facial bones, acne all over, an appearance Kelly subconsciously associates with steroid use. Brendan seems to agree with her. "Man, look at that guy. He's juicin', or I'm a monkey's uncle," he yells into her ear. "Slipshot organization, lettin' that kind of thing go on."

"You are not a monkey's uncle," she yells back. "'Roids, definitely. Is that bad for Tommy?"

"Depends," Brendan says, but he looks worried.

The ref starts the fight, and the other guy – one Rocco Martinelli, out of Trenton, New Jersey – comes right out swinging and Tommy meets him with it. Tommy seems faster, landing a flurry of blows but taking some himself, including one good pop to the face, and Brendan winces. Then he remembers Kelly's fears and slings an arm around her shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she says, breathless. Because somehow, watching Tommy fight is not making her think of Mike's fists coming at her; instead she's thinking of Tommy Up Close, all sweaty and powerful, and it's getting to her, right in the abdomen where her arousal starts. There's blood on Tommy's lip and chin, but there's some on the other guy's face too, and people are screaming for more.

Tommy lands a couple of heavy kicks to that Rocco guy's thighs, and then takes him down to the mat, whip-fast, locking his arms around the guy's neck. "Chokehold, yeah, Tommy," Brendan's muttering, leaning forward and clenching his fists. "Hold him, hold him, hold him." The other guy is rocking his body back and forth, kicking, trying to break the hold, but Tommy's in deep and the guy's face is starting to go purple. "Dig your hips in!" Brendan yells, really loud, and Tommy seems to hear him or figure it out on his own, because his body moves subtly, pressing closer to the mat, the muscles in his arms standing out harder, and suddenly Rocco goes limp. "He's down! Passed out from lack of oxygen," Brendan explains unnecessarily to Kelly, and then starts cheering at the top of his voice.

"They didn't even go the whole of the first round," Brendan's saying to Kelly as the lights come up and the EMTs go to check on Rocco while Tommy stands in his corner holding his mouthpiece and looking cheerful. Then Brendan's pulling his cell phone out, startled, and answering it. The crowd noise has calmed down some while the EMTs work on Rocco – who's now coming to – so Kelly hears him say, "Hello? Oh, Justin... what the hell, where are you?... The jail? Now? Aw, Justin, for Chrissakes – _now_, seriously?" There's a pause, and then he says, "What, your parents aren't home?" and "You better bet you're in trouble, Justin. But we'll talk about it later. All right. All right. I'll be there." He ends the call and looks at Kelly. "You sure you're okay? One of my wrestlers just got arrested for DWI, and his parents are out of town. I gotta go down to the jail and get him out. Can you bring Tommy home?" She nods, still riding her own excitement. Sure, she can. "Tell him I saw the whole fight and congrats, I'll recap it with him when I get home. Okay?"

Kelly nods again. Brendan leaves, pushing through the crowd, and then the ref holds the wrists of a recovered Rocco and a smiling Tommy, holding Tommy's arm up and declaring him the winner as the audience screams again. All around her, girls are shrieking, "Casey! Casey Finnegan!" and preening, as Tommy seems to be scanning the audience for someone.

Probably he's looking for Brendan, Kelly thinks, and tries to figure how she can get his attention without yelling his real name – and then she knows. She puts two fingers to her mouth and whistles the way Daddy taught her. _"Hey, John Wayne!"_

The girl standing next to her looks at her and says, "Honey, he ain't gonna pay attention to you dressed like a librarian."

Kelly says, "Friend of the family," too annoyed to let it go but too exhilarated by seeing Tommy to pursue it any farther. She keeps waving. Then Tommy sees her, and a grin splits his face. He points right at her.

Tommy Conlon, sweaty and pumped, swaggering with that physical intensity he has in the cage, is a sight fit to dampen panties all over the hall. Tommy Conlon smiling, on the other hand, is sufficient to swell Kelly's heart with emotion. He's gorgeous all the time, but that _smile_, good Lord, it's enough to make her want to cry. The heat in her abdomen spreads everywhere, and when he actually swings himself over the top of the cage and drops down to grab her shoulders she gasps with the shock of her body's response. "You're here!" he yells over the crowd noise. She nods. "Where's Brendan?"

She tries to explain about the high school wrestler who's just gone to jail, and that Brendan made sure to stay for the end of Tommy's fight, but maybe he's not really listening, because he's still smiling, and he wraps his arms around her and kisses her forehead, bloody lip and all, and she wants him to never stop. "_God,_ you're beautiful, you look like a pink tulip," he says, and pulls back to look at her while she's trying to gather her composure. Which is entirely scattered by the way she feels, all floppy and unstable and full of emotions that roll around so fast she can't catch even one of them to see what it is. "Sorry, I just got sweat all over you." Before she can say _It's cotton, it'll wash,_ he's kissing her again, not just her forehead but both her cheeks and then her mouth and she can't not kiss him back, it would just be impossible.

There's a security guy suddenly behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and telling him he needs to go to the back. "Okay," he says. "Hey, this is Kelly – let her through after the officials are done with me, man."

She can feel the security guy's eyes on her, and although it feels faintly like being ogled, as if she'd walked in here in only her underwear, she's too dazed by the effect of Tommy Up Close to do anything about it. "You_ are_ comin' back to the dressing room, aren't you?" Tommy asks, and she nods.

"Get some ice on that lip," she tells him.

Then he's gone to wherever-it-is, and the girls around her are muttering snippy things, all "friend of the family, my ass" and "guess he likes midgets who dress like Aunt Bea," stuff like that, but that doesn't touch her either. And a few minutes later a new set of fighters come out for the next match, and the security guy motions to her to come on, through the metal gate.

So she walks, a little weak in the knees, and he points her down a short hall. "Third door on the right," he says. "Just go on in."

Before she gets there, the door opens and a guy with an EMT badge comes out, followed by a man in a black shirt and khakis that her brain immediately pegs as the money guy. So the official stuff is done. The two men look her up and down as she opens the door, just like the security guy had done, and she wonders whether all the guys who work fights have this women-are-sex-objects attitude, or what. Or is she dripping sex from her fingertips the way Marilyn Monroe used to, just from being this close to Tommy?

Doesn't matter, because there he is, taking the last of the tape from his hands and swiping at his head with a towel. He's still all lit up, smiling at her, and she can no more resist that smile than she could stretch out her arms and fly. "Hi," she says, and he comes to her and lifts her chin up.

"I got my blood all over you," he says, surprised. "Here, let me clean it – " but she interrupts.

"No, leave it, it's okay," she says. She means she'll wipe it off later, once he's gotten some ice on that split lip. But his eyes go suddenly dark and hot as he sucks in a breath, almost a gasp, and then his mouth is on hers, and she has to slide her arms around him to hold on, or she'll fall because her heels are high and her knees are not working properly, and he propels her backward to the wall, which is better because she can lean against it for balance. Her entire insides have gone completely liquid because he's kissing her, and the gentleness of his hands on her face makes her want to cry, and the feel of all that powerful muscle under her hands is so damn good, and she can suddenly tell that she might as well not be wearing any panties at all because her inner thighs are slick with her own moisture. She can taste iron in his kisses, from his blood, and that's erotic, she's tasting more of him than she has before, and she's suddenly awash in this desperate need to be closer to him.

He's saying things into her mouth and her neck and her collarbone as his hands leave her face to explore her body, half-completed phrases and sounds that aren't actual words, _missed you _and _never leave again _and _so good_, and a whole string of swear words mixed up with her name, and _baby_ the sweet pleady way he always says it to her. Her hands find him inside his shorts and he feels so full and firm, so much power there. His clever fingers slide up her thighs to slip past her damp panties, she gasps, and then he says _God Kelly you're so wet_, more groaned than spoken. And then he's on his knees on that concrete floor, shoving her dress up, hooking one of her legs over his shoulder and pushing her harder into the wall for balance as her panties are suddenly just gone and his fingers are spreading apart the folds of flesh there so he can kiss and lick and taste that secret place.

Kelly's moaning now, her hands in his hair while she tries very hard not to beg, and just as she's about to anyway, he stands back up, yanks down his shorts, and angles her hips against the wall so he can push inside her, hard. "Oh _Christ_," he says, and lifts her by her ass, pressing her harder up and into the wall. She wraps her legs around him and holds him tight, arms around his neck, and she's gone animal, mindless with pleasure and oblivious to everything but the feel of him moving inside her, strong and fast, and then her climax hits her with so much force that she almost passes out. Everything goes dark and silent for a second or two, and then he's saying, "God, Kelly, I can't – _ah shit yeah_," and his teeth sink a little way into the curve of her shoulder as he thrusts deeper and presses her even closer to the wall, the heat of his orgasm flooding her.

Even though it's only taken a few minutes, his knees buckle a bit and they're both breathing like they've just finished a marathon. "Can you – " he starts to say, but she knows already, and she puts one foot back on the ground, making sure that leg is secure before she puts the other one down and lets him slip out, only then realizing that her fingernails are actually digging into his shoulders. She unclenches her hands, still coming back to full consciousness, and strokes the place where she's gripped him too tight. "You okay?" he asks, his voice gravelly with effort.

"Uh huh," she manages to get out, and then he's pulling her close again, kissing her lips over and over as she feels his seed slip out and slide down her thighs, and something about that is bothering her but she's distracted by his beautiful mouth on hers and by the fact that she hasn't got nearly enough oxygen. But finally he puts his forehead against her neck and sighs.

"Baby, I missed you so much," he says, sounding sincere, kissing the spot where he'd bitten her. "God, there is just _nothin'_ that feels as good as being inside you."

And that strange little sentence tells her he's been comparing, and she suddenly feels sick. Now she knows what's bugging her, it's that he's been with somebody else – is probably still with somebody else, just not right at the moment. And she let him inside her, she's let him _come_ inside her, and God only knows what kind of trouble that could mean.

From the passionate, electric heat of a few minutes ago she's suddenly plunged into the icy realization that she has, once again, done Something Very Irresponsible with Tommy Conlon, just for the simple reason that she wanted him. Wanted him to touch her, wanted to touch him, wanted him inside her making her feel good. She hears Fred's voice in her head, _she'll turn out to be a trashy slut like her sister_, and then Mike's, _whore, can't keep your legs closed_... Shame comes roaring back to her. She'd just shut her brain off and gone with her feelings, and she's nauseous with her own stupidity. "Let go," she tells him, starting to panic. "I mean it, let me go." Tommy steps back from her looking concerned and puzzled, keeping his hands on her shoulders. "Where are my panties?"

"You okay?" he asks her again. It sounds like he cares, but at the same time it's familiar, it's the way Mike used to sound when he was making up to her for something, like _Don't be mad, honey, I didn't do anything you should be mad about._

"_No_. Where the hell did you put my panties?" And then she sees them – they're on the floor behind him, so ripped they're ruined, and it feels like her heart's been ripped open too, and she's suddenly furious. "Goddamn it, Tommy, I can't even wear those now." Her thighs are still slippery with the evidence of her bad judgment, and she feels stupid and second-best and taken advantage of. She picks up the towel he's been using to wipe sweat off, and swipes it between her legs. "Be lucky if dogs don't follow me home," she mutters, and he laughs, his little snort of ironic amusement, and it just makes her more furious.

He hasn't yet said he's sorry for putting her through hell, for calling Brendan instead of her, for moving in with a stripper (and where_ is_ Jen, by the way?) and all the rest of it, every minute of her worry about him and her abandonment, her misery and her tears. "I did not come back here for this, you know," she says venomously.

His face is still open and sweet, lips still curled up at the ends the way they do when he's pleased about something. "Yeah, you did."

"I did _not_. I had no idea you were gonna lay moves on me like that." That's another thing that's pissing her off, how empty her mind had been of "no." Even with how aroused she'd been watching him fight, she hadn't expected those heady back-room kisses, and she certainly hadn't expected that she'd be having wild incredible sex in a position she'd never experienced before. She hadn't been prepared for him in the least.

"Well, you did say yes when I asked you to come back," he says defensively, and he makes a sudden grab for his athletic shorts, leaving the compression shorts and the cup on the floor, like he doesn't want to be naked in front of her now.

The light dawns on her. This is common. Post-fight sex happens all the time. _This_ is why all those girls in mini-skirts were being snarky with her, because they'd each wanted to be the one chosen. _This_ is why every man watching her walk back to the dressing rooms had been ogling her like she was naked in public. And Tommy thinks this is normal. She'd been crazy to think that a guy used to this kind of thing would be capable of fidelity.

She's so ticked at herself, and at him too, that she just opens her mouth and lets loose. "So, _what,_ you were just horny? You look forward to a raunchy fuck every time you fight? Do the girls line up outside?" She's already mad, and his wary, WTH expression is just making it worse. "I am not your piece of occasional ass that you can just walk off on and ignore until you're ready for it!"

"No," he says, "listen, Kelly, it's not like th–"

She can't listen to any more Mike-like bullshit. "And don't give me that 'it's all in your mind, babe' crap. Did you call me _once _while you were gone? Did you even think about me, worried sick about you? Did you have the guts to tell me in person it was over? _No_. No, you didn't. Goddamn it, I must have been insane to come to this thing."

Tommy's expression is that of a man who's been minding his own business and has suddenly had a firehose turned onto him: blinded, overwhelmed, stunned. "Kelly..."

"Ugh. I feel sick to my stomach. I cannot believe I let you do that to me. Where the hell is my purse?" She finds it near the door and shoves it under her arm instead of putting the strap on her shoulder.

"Kelly," he repeats, still standing rooted to the spot like some statue of a sex god. A dopey, _confused _sex god. "I don't get this. Why – "

"Of course you don't get it! You're a man! You think it's your God-given right to walk around screwing everything that will let you get close enough, and I am sure as hell not gonna let you get close enough ever again."

She yanks the door open, and there's a whole slew of people outside it in orange "Russo's Gym" tee-shirts, looking as gobsmacked to see her as she is to see them. Most of them are girls; one of them is Jen. It is a shocker to Kelly that Jen does not look annoyed that her boyfriend (yeah, _boyfriend_) has had another girl in his dressing room. Jen doesn't even look surprised to see her.

Kelly starts to nod. "Okay, I get the picture," she says to Tommy in a voice that signals her emotional proximity to Losing Her Total Shit. "_I _get it, I was just the _first _girl to walk in here. Well, I'm the first one out, too." To Jen and the rest of the girls she says bitterly, "Take a number, ladies, I'm sure he'll be available in a few minutes. Excuse me."

The small, fascinated crowd magically parts to let her pass, and she walks down the hall as fast as she can manage in these damn shoes her pride had made her choose, inappropriate as they were for the evening's activities.

From behind her he's yelling down the hall, "Kelly! Goddamn it, Kelly, don't leave!" and she remembers he doesn't have a way home. She stops walking and turns around.

"If you still need a ride to Brendan's I'll drive you," she says, practically spitting the words through clenched teeth. "I'm leaving in fifteen minutes, no exceptions. I'll be in the car." She turns back to the outer door, which must be the back entrance, and shoves it open.

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8

… **had better damn well start running.**

Tommy stands there, mouth open at the unfairness of it all, of Kelly kissing him and smiling at him there near the cage and agreeing to come back to his dressing room, of her being completely beautiful and so wet, so turned on, and she'd really come hard, he knows she did – and then her being pissed off after for reasons he cannot imagine, stomping off down the hall with that sweet round ass of hers all bare and moving sassy under her dress, still so beautiful and so_ his,_ despite her girl snit, that he could make love to her again right now. He doesn't get it. He doesn't. Okay, so he hadn't said much, not with words; he'd said them all with his body. But she was _there_, she should know how he meant every kiss and every move, every part of him saying_ it's you I love you so much I missed you so much you're part of me I'll die if we never get to do this again._ It's just that he can't talk when his feelings are overwhelming like that.

Coherent speech had deserted him about the time his instincts told him, _Up against the wall would be good,_ but finally he gets out, "The_ fuck _was that?" It's not a real question, it's the kind that doesn't need an answer – oh yeah, rhetorical, that's it – but Clarice actually answers him.

"Ooooh, Hotness, you in some deep shit wit' yo' girlfriend. Whatja do to her?"

The rage of being misunderstood is back like it never left, clenching his fists and his jaw. "Nothin'. I didn't do nothin' to her."

"Tommy," Jen says, "I ain't callin' you a liar or anything, but you had to have done somethin', the way she's acting." She looks pointedly at the floor near his feet, and Tommy looks down to see Kelly's pink lace panties there, obviously ripped even at a distance. She raises her eyebrows at him so he knows she knows what just went on, and normally he would have been embarrassed, especially because Steve is standing there in the hall too, but right now he doesn't have time for that, Kelly is _upset_.

He sighs hard and bends down to pick them up, stuffing them into his gym bag, and yanking out a shirt to put on. He slides his feet into his athletic sandals. "Look, I gotta go catch her. Thanks for comin' to see me, but I gotta go."

"No problem, go catch your girl," Steve says, and there's a murmur of agreement.

"Not even sure she's still my girl," he mutters under his breath, picking up his gym bag and making sure his cash winnings are buried at the bottom.

"Oh, she's your girl all right. If she _wasn't_ your girl she wouldn't be so mad at you. Did you grovel?" Jen asks as he's leaving the room, pushing his way through the group.

"Didn't have a chance to," he says over his shoulder. "She ain't been talking to me all week. Not answerin' her phone, either."

"You in _trouble_," Clarice informs him again, unnecessarily, as he's booking it down the hall after Kelly.

"I know," he calls back, not turning around.

"Call me later and tell me how it went," Jen yells, and he just nods.

Kelly's car is at the far end of the parking lot, and she's not quite there yet; she's still having trouble going very fast on those short little legs, and probably the wiggle caused by those sexy shoes isn't helping. He speeds up, and catches her just as she reaches the Corolla. "Hey. Hey, baby, I am sorry. I am really sorry."

"For what?" she demands, evading his hand to unlock the car.

Which is a problem, because he still doesn't know exactly what he's done wrong, just that he's fucked up again. "Everything," he says, hoping that will at least calm her down enough to listen to him, because it_ is_ true. He's sorry for everything that has upset her, whether he did it or it just happened, for everything that's hurt her.

She yanks the car door open, narrowly missing his shin, and that's when he finally realizes this is not just one of her normal mads that'll go away once she bursts into tears and gets some perspective. She's not just hurt, she is really, really pissed off – _at him_ – and his first inclination is to duck and run, except that he's already done that and all it did was make things worse. "Get in," she orders.

He walks around the front of the car and gets in the passenger side, slinging his gym bag into the back so that it lands in Martin's booster seat. The thing is, he doesn't know how to be with her right now, whether to just let her yell so he can figure out what's eating her shorts, or to try to deal with her rationally. Instinct says to deal with her concerns one by one, explaining what really happened so she'll calm down. *

She's already pulling out of the parking lot and onto the street when he finally says something. "Kelly. Listen, I know you are mad at me. I just, I just don't get why." He reaches a hand out cautiously and puts it very gently on her leg, near her knee, because he hates sitting next to her and not touching her.

It is the wrong thing to do. "Get your hand off me," she hisses, and as he's pulling his hand back, stung, he's suddenly flashing back to two years ago, Pop massaging his shoulders as he's waiting to enter the cage for his first match at Sparta, him just as pissy-tempered with Pop because he couldn't stand a gentle touch from someone who'd hurt him so much.

"I'm sorry," he says, meaning for touching her right now and for whatever he's done. "Kelly, I'm so sorry." He's sincere, he really means it, and he just wants her to tell him what's wrong so he can fix it.

"Sorry?" she repeats, and brakes a little too hard for a stoplight. "You're _sorry?_ Now?" The anger in her voice is sharp and acid. "What the hell good does that do me at this point? You can't just expect an apology to make everything better."

And once again, he's hearing the echo of conversations with his own father. Pop saying _I'm sorry, Tommy_, and it not being even the thin edge of enough sorry to lift the weight of everything that happened. _ I'm sorry, Tommy_, still doesn't un-beat up Mom, doesn't un-yell at Brendan for dropping a plate, doesn't un-frighten a six-year-old Tommy who's just had his teeth loosened by Pop's hungover backhand. Doesn't un-ignore Brendan's bid for his dad's attention, doesn't un-kick a teenage Tommy's ribs. It fixes nothing. In the secretest part of Tommy's heart, he still blames Pop for most of the pain of his childhood.

But that apology, it had been what Pop had to give, all he had to give. That and his staying sober for the better part of five years, excepting only that day Tommy had leveled with him, telling Pop just how useless he was to his sons. Pop's staying sober, that has done more than anything to heal his boys.

And still Tommy hasn't forgiven Pop entirely. Especially not for Mom's busted teeth and broken arm and black eyes, not for her shrinking in on herself in fear and shame.

So, right now, he is horrified by being in the position that he doesn't know how to fix things with Kelly, that his _I'm sorry, baby_, is exactly the same as Pop's totally inadequate _I'm sorry, Tommy. _His _I'm sorry, baby_, doesn't un-leave her. Not even his coming back un-leaves her, and finally he's getting what Brendan said the other day, about how leaving changes things, how you never get the exact same people in the exact same relationship back. And his stomach just drops, and he has no idea what to say.

"I don't have anything else," he confesses. "All I have is that I fucked up, and I'm sorry. I wish I'd had the balls to stick it out and talk to you."

She doesn't say anything because she's getting onto the freeway, which always makes her nervous. But she keeps not saying anything even when she's merged into traffic.

"So I'm trying to talk to you now," he says. "Trying to be here for you, and I don't know why you won't let me. Because you have never been unfair. Usually it's you bending over backwards to be fair, and actually going too far the other way. Like going out with Mike – " which still pisses him off to a_ huge_ degree of rage, if he thinks about it – "when he really deserves to be thrown in jail and drowned and be stuck full of arrows and shit."

He's deliberately ridiculous with it, hoping to make her laugh, but she doesn't. She's still looking straight ahead, just watching the road. It is completely unlike her, and it's starting to scare him. Usually she just bursts out with stuff.

He sighs. Okay, one more try and then if she doesn't talk he'll let it go for now. "Kelly... look. I mean, I get that you're upset – "

And she interrupts him, exploding with her usual word-vomit thing, so that he only catches half of it – if that. "Of course I'm upset, you asshole! You just let me sashay on back to the After-Fight Sex Playground with everybody staring at me, knowing I was the slutty entertainment – "

"You were _not_," he interrupts her right back. That's dumb, it doesn't mean she's a hooker or something.

– "and then you, you just sort of grabbed me and shagged me stupid up against the wall, oh _great_, more slutty behavior, without even talking to me about something _important,_ like why you left , and why you moved in with a stripper, and how you lied to me – "

"I _did not lie_ to you!" he shoots back, furious. "When the hell did I ever lie to you?"

"Well, let's look at that, shall we?" she says, all sarcastic and shit. "It was either when you told me you loved me – "

"I _do_ love you, goddamn it!"

"Shut _up_ and let me finish! Either you lied to me when you said you loved me, or you lied to me when you wrote me that letter and told me that we screwed it up, and I should forget about you, so which one was it? Hmm?" She's relentless, and she's on a roll, and it's all he can do to try to remember every reason why she's mad.

"I didn't lie. I was just... confused. I thought it would be better for me to be out of your life now than hurt you some time in the future, I mean really bad, even though it was killing me to be away from you."

"You didn't say that part," she says. "If you'd said that, I might have known you just had your head up your ass."

"I just knew you should find somebody more stable, somebody who's better for you, so I decided to take myself out of the picture."

"Oh, you just _decided_ that! All on your own, you figured out what I would want and you did it for me so I wouldn't have to do anything awkward and scary and confusing as to love you, so you would have to be vulnerable. Yeah, _you _decided that? Wrong answer, Tommy. That was not your decision to make!"

God, his head's going to just explode from the drama overload. Especially since he thinks he's heard somebody else yell that at him before.

"Besides which, you moved in with a stripper! God Almighty, did you have no idea how that would hurt me?"

"Who are you talking about? Jen?" It makes no sense.

"_Yes_, Jen. Unless you moved in with somebody else too, Einstein."

"Einstein" stings. "Oh, look here, Kelly, I did not 'move in with her.' I slept on her couch, there's a difference. I didn't sleep with her. It wasn't like that. She was just being nice. And she's not a stripper, she's a bartender who fights in her spare time."

"Yeah? Tell me another one."

"It's true, I didn't."

"Fine, you didn't sleep with her," Kelly says, and it's clear from her tone of voice that she doesn't believe him.

"I didn't have sex with her either," he clarifies.

"Bullshit," she says.

"I didn't touch her! Well, okay, I kissed her once, but that was all, I swear, and I stopped it because it felt like cheating on you."

"That is complete crap, and I have heard enough justifications and excuses that I know, by now," she insists. And while he's sputtering with indignation, because not only did he not have sex with Jen, Jen had practically given him a written invitation and he'd turned her down because of _Kelly_, she goes on, "I've heard all the excuses, trust me. I've heard all of the 'no, it didn't happen that way' explanations and the 'you're imagining things' justifications and the flat-out lies, and there is just no way I believe them anymore. I am sick to death of the excuses and justifications and phony explanations, and I can _not_ believe that I just let you fuck me anyway, it's one of the stupidest things I've ever done and I have no excuse."

That stings too. "Hey," he says, on the defensive, "you wanted it as much as I did. You_ liked_ it. Don't play babe in the woods with me, you came your _brains_ out."

He's watching her now, and he's surprised to see her eyes go shiny all at once. She takes a little unsteady breath, and then she says, "That's right, blame the girl. It's her fault she's a slut."

"You are not a slut, and I never said you were!" Somehow the conversation has gotten way off track from where he'd wanted it to go – which was something like, '_I'm sorry, baby,' _followed by '_Oh, that's okay, sweetie, I understand, and you're back now so let's go to bed.' _That would have been ideal.

"You ripped my _panties_ off, Tommy," she says.

"Oh, for God's sake," he says. This is what she's mad about? "I'll buy you some more panties. And then I'll rip those off you, too, so why are we fighting about this?"

"We are not fighting about panties!" she shrieks, and the noise seems to surprise even her. She checks the speedometer and slows down. "Dammit, and now I'm speeding."

"You shouldn't drive when you're mad," he tells her.

"Shut up!" she yells. "I can't listen to any more of this, I'll wreck us and then you'll be sorry, so just shut the fucking hell up and stop being such a guy! You can't fix me by telling me I shouldn't be upset!"

_Why not?_, he wonders. Why doesn't that work? If there's no reason to be upset, then it follows that she shouldn't be upset. He didn't sleep with Jen, and he didn't lie to Kelly, and for Chrissake he'll _buy_ her some more damn panties. He shakes his head. "Well, when you are ready to be rational, you let me know, okay?"

"Fine," she snaps. "And you can let me know when you're ready to tell me why you treated me like shit."

"I didn't treat you – "

"_Shut up!_ And I feel like you treated me like shit, so whether you know it or not, you did."

So he stops arguing and shuts up. Whatever. This evening is so not ending up the way he'd hoped it would.

The rest of the drive back to Brendan's is silent. When they pull into the driveway, he tells her, "Thanks for the ride," and she gives him back this sarcastic face.

"_Which. One_?" she says, almost sneering, and it just pierces him to the heart, that snarky way she's talking about the way they wound up wrapped around each other.

"I mean the car ride back here. Of course. Because that other thing, that wasn't a ride. It meant something. It mattered to me." He sighs again, grabs his bag out of the back, and gets out of the car. Then he leans back in through the window and tells her, "Look, if you need anything, if you want me to talk to you or you want to yell at me, you call me. I mean it."

It's her turn to sigh. But she doesn't say anything, and he heads inside. He is completely fucking exhausted now, and he's more confused than ever.


	44. Chapter 44: Jedi Master

**Chapter 44: Jedi Master**

It's Thursday evening, and Frank is sitting with his elbows on the Conlons' table, looking forward to Brendan's grilled chili-lime-mesquite chicken and wondering if one Dos Equis might do the trick, or if he'll dare two. Being at Brendan's house is easier now than it used to be; he and Tess have come to some sort of tacit compact where she doesn't mind the hours Brendan spends at the gym, so long as it's understood that she and the girls come first. And to be honest, he has to admit that at times in the past he's actually been jealous of Tess, so it's not like all the fault was hers.

He glances at the man sitting next to him at the table, and then at the hostess, who is currently slicing up vegetables, conversing with her older daughter about how to set the table, while her younger daughter sits on her uncle's knee and tells him this long convoluted story about the stuffed giraffe she's making dance on the table. Tommy's engaged with Rosie's story, relaxed and smiling a little, asking a question now and then, and Frank likes to watch him be so comfortable. It's not often Tommy relaxes at all, and of course the smile is rare.

Tommy's had a bad week since his most recent fight, which Brendan says he'd won easily with a takedown and a chokehold. He's been super-focused at the gym, and Frank's had to pull him back from overdoing it an average of twice a day. He hopes Tommy hasn't been running extra the way he was when he'd gotten his CK levels up so ridiculously high.

Brendan comes in from the deck where he's been monitoring the grill. He rinses off the plate he brought in and puts it in the dishwasher, washes his hands, and turns to kiss Tess. It's funny, you know – over the years Frank's seen this often enough but it still amuses him, the way that every single time Brendan comes in the house, whether he's been away for a week or coming home from work or just coming in from mowing the grass, he finds Tess and kisses her. It still gives Frank a little pang, too. _To be loved like that..._ He sighs a little, and then leans back in his chair to let Emily set utensils on the table in front of him. "That looks like a good job," he tells her, because it _is_ a good job, everything in the right place and straight and neat, and because giving praise for a good job is ingrained in him. Emily nods, accepting her due.

Next to him, Tommy picks the giraffe off the table and hands it to Rosie so the spot in front of him is clear, and strokes his big hand down the length of Emily's hair with affection as she puts the knife and spoon down. "How come Rosie's not helping?" Emily says, frowning at her little sister before setting the fork down on the other side. "How come _she_ gets to sit on your lap and not help?"

Tommy shrugs. "I dunno. Tell you what, though, you come find me after we eat, and tell me about karate. You can show me what you learned this week, okay?"

"Okay," Emily says, sounding happier, and bounces around the table with utensils. Tess reminds her, "Don't forget to set places for Kelly and her friend," and Frank sees Tommy's head snap up and his smile fade. _Huh._

"I didn't realize Kelly was coming. She's bringing a friend?" Brendan asks, and kisses Tess again.

"I talked her into it," Tess says, and kisses him back. "A date, actually. He's nice."

"Didn't know she'd started dating again," Brendan comments. "So who is this guy? And where are the eggplant slices, are they ready to go on?"

Tess points to a platter of thickly-sliced, seasoned vegetables: onion, bell pepper, eggplant, summer squash, tomato. "His name's Joe, and she met him when he brought a friend in for surgery follow-up at the doctor's office where she works. So they were staring at each other thinking, 'Hey, don't I know you?' and then they realized that they had actually been in the chorus together at Penn State." Tess laughs. "You know her cliché about who ER nurses wind up dating? Take a guess what he does." Brendan shrugs. "C'mon, you've only got three options, babe. Guess."

Brendan picks up the platter of sliced vegetables. "Well, then, he's either a paramedic, a firefighter, or a cop. I'm going with... paramedic this time."

"No, he's a cop," Tess says, smiling. "I took the kids with me and had lunch with her yesterday – you know how we like to eat at the picnic table outside at her office? – and he dropped by to bring her a cupcake and a bunch of daisies. It was sweet." Brendan rolls his eyes, but he smiles too, and Frank shakes his head a little. Jeez. He mutters _Cupcake_ under his breath, glancing over to catch Tommy's eye so they can share a chuckle over the things women think are 'sweet.'

But Tommy's put on his Great Stone Face look – blank, eyes hard – and Frank blinks. _What's this all about?_ He has yet to really figure Tommy out, and although he understands a number of things about how to handle and motivate his fighter, Tommy is often a puzzle. More to the point, maybe, he's a page that looks blank but is crammed full of invisible writing in a dead language, like Sumerian. In _code:_ a multiple-level puzzle.

Frank takes another hard look at Tommy, who is still holding Rosie on his lap but now appears not to be paying attention to her, instead staring into the far distance, his lips pressed together. Staring at Tommy's lips is a frustratingly futile enterprise, anyway, so Frank turns back to Brendan, who's now heading for the door with the veggies but still talking. "She deserves a great guy. So what's this one like?"

"Oh, he's _cute_," Tess says with enthusiasm. "Dark hair and eyes, dimples, great smile. He's a detective, actually, not a regular uniform, and he's really charming. He made me laugh, so dinner ought to be fun."

"Sounds like it," Brendan says, and takes the vegetables out to the grill.

_Oh, I'll just bet,_ Frank thinks sourly. Tess and Brendan are in full happily-married mode, the kids are being adorable, Tommy's gone Easter Island Stone Head (and isn't much of a conversationalist on his best days anyway), and it's times like these that Frank most regrets not having a significant other.

Without warning, Tommy picks Rosie up off his lap and sets her down. "Hey, doll, I'm going outside for awhile. Better go put your giraffe to bed so he doesn't get tired," he says, ignoring her _But Uncle Tommy!_ wail. And then he's banged through the back door too, and there's Frank in a kitchen with a guy's wife. To get past that, he asks Tess if he can help do anything, and Tess says it would be terrific if he tossed the salad, so they stand at the counter doing kitcheny stuff, companionable but not talking.

The salad is ready when Brendan comes back in with a clean platter piled high with that chili-lime chicken, and one of grilled vegetables, and suddenly the whole kitchen smells awesome. Tess immediately covers the platters with foil to keep them warm. Brendan goes back out with a foil-wrapped package of garlic bread and one containing nectarines and blueberries, to be placed on the grill and cooked as it cools down. "Hey, bring me a beer, willya?" he throws over his shoulder to Frank.

Frank will willingly abandon the kitchen and Tess for Brendan and beer, of course. He grabs a Dos Equis for himself out of the fridge, a plain club soda for Tommy, and a Labatt's for Brendan, and takes them out to the deck. Brendan's got lime wedges out there, he saw them earlier. Frank pops the cap on the Labatt's and hands it over as Brendan removes the mesquite-chip smoker box, tosses the foil packets onto the grill, turns down the heat, and closes the cover. The lime wedge barely fits inside the neck of Frank's Mexican beer, just perfect, and he turns to see if Tommy wants lime in his soda. Tommy's already drunk some of it to make room for the lime, and is squeezing the wedge into the bottle, spattering juice everywhere. He licks some of it off his hand, which is entertaining to watch, and then reaches for another lime wedge to squeeze in.

Frank had officially met Paddy Conlon at the hospital a couple years ago, outside the room where Tommy was being prepped for shoulder surgery and Brendan, ignoring his own bruises against Frank's advice, was pacing up and down. Frank had seen this older man in an old-school satin jacket in Pittsburgh colors with "Fitzy's" on the back, seen his height and shoulders and the shape of his head, and immediately known who he was. Hadn't even needed to see him standing next to Brendan to see the family resemblance: the slightly-slanted Celtic eyes so alike in color, the delicacy of the lips, the thrust of chin. The older man had smelled like hangover, that chemical tang of alcohol sweat, and his eyes had been red-rimmed, hands shaky. _That's Brendan in forty years_, Frank had thought to himself. _Or fifty, maybe. Lotta mileage on that guy._

Mrs. Conlon must have been the source of Tommy's lush mouth, and of his graceful jaw, less squared-off than that of his brother or father. But Tommy's forehead creases up like his father's does, and he's got that Conlon chin. Also the stubbornness that seems to be a family trait, that's an Irish thing. Italian men can be proud and belligerent and fiery-tempered, Frank knows too well, but there is absolutely _nothing_ like the pigheadedness of a male with Gaelic genes.

Brendan asks about Marco Santos' progress, and Frank tells him he's doing very well. He'd like to tell Brendan what he really thinks, which is that if Tommy can stay focused, he's got a better shot at it than Marco, who is young and needs a little more experience before he can carry the tournament. Marco, although he is a fighting machine, is still learning, and sometimes Frank thinks he's too academic about the whole thing. Let Tommy loose without making him think too much, and he can totally kick Marco's ass most of the time. But Frank doesn't want to give Tommy a false sense of security, and still less does he want to discuss Tommy as if he's not sitting there silently licking lime off his hand and looking sullen, which is a sure sign that his brain's working overtime on something it shouldn't be.

What he _does _want to discuss is what might happen if Marco and Tommy, gym-mates, should be paired together for a bout. It's possible, with the random selection of matches – though not likely – and if that should occur he'd like Brendan to be available to serve as a second in the cage for Tommy.

"Doesn't seem quite fair," Brendan observes in a mild tone of voice, cracking the grill open to check on the progress of the fruit, and then closing it again. "That you'd be giving advice to one of your fighters against the other."

"I know it's not fair," Frank says simply. "But, thing is, he needs me less than Marco would. And if you check the history, I think his overall win-lose record against Marco is around 70-30, something like that. And _that's _when I've been cluttering up his head with new techniques and whatnot. He's actually better when you get him to practice new stuff and just mix it into his repertoire, instead of making him think in the moment. He's amazingly instinctive. You were right, he does learn best by doing." He expects Tommy's glare at this point, but it doesn't come. Tommy continues to sip club soda out of the bottle and stare off the deck railing toward the tree house. _Well, __**he's **__zoned out for the moment_. "Also, I think he trusts you."

"Some," Brendan says, eying Tommy as if he's an unexploded bomb sitting right there on the deck. "And probably better me than Pop, to be honest. At least I'll _be_ there."

"Yeah, there is that."

Brendan opens the grill again, pokes the foil packages a few times, and says, "Hey, this stuff is ready. Let's go eat." He shuts off the burners and the gas (because Brendan is careful like that, one of the many things Frank's always appreciated about him), and heads for the door before realizing that Tommy's gone mentally AWOL. "Get him, would you?" he says to Frank, motioning.

Frank taps Tommy on the shoulder twice before he looks up, and there's a darkness to his gaze that Frank doesn't like. "Dinner," he says. "Come on."

"In a minute," Tommy says, and stays put, but Brendan comes back out onto the deck, simply grabs his brother's arm and pulls.

"I didn't slave over a grill so you could poke around and let the food get cold," he says. "Everybody's here and we're eating _now_." And he pulls Tommy into the kitchen, Frank following.

The food smells great. The kitchen is jam-packed full of people, what with the kids underfoot and Tess pouring them drinks and two people who must be the aforementioned Kelly-and-her-date, laughing into each other's faces the way people do when there's real liking between them. The cop _is_ cute, Frank decides: medium height, lean but muscled, with narrow amused dark eyes and smile-creased cheeks. And for a girl, Kelly's pretty cute herself: short and curvy, with wavy brown hair and a bright open face.

It's only when everyone is sitting at the table, Frank next to Tommy and across from Kelly and Joe-the-cop that the penny drops and Frank remembers the name of the girl who'd been ignoring Tommy, the one he'd asked Frank's advice about, the one he'd left behind. He's pretty sure the name was Kelly. _Pretty_ sure. And it would fit with Tommy's sudden, sullen silence – which nobody else seems to have noticed. Except maybe Kelly herself, because occasionally her gaze will catch Tommy's, and they seem to be having some sort of conversation without words, and not a pleasant one.

But dinner is really good, and Frank gets distracted by it. Dinner is so good, in fact, that he abandons face-watching and "So, Joe..." conversation for stretches of time to focus on the chicken and vegetables and an interesting quinoa-black bean dish that's piquant with lime and cilantro. "Hey, Tess, could I have the recipe for this?" he asks, once Gilhooley has answered that yes, he's from Philly, has family in the area, yes, they're police, yeah, he went to Penn State, wasn't it awful about those poor boys (real anger in his voice, Frank notices), and yeah, he works long hours.

"Oh, Kelly made that," Tess says to Frank from the foot of the table, cutting up chicken for her younger daughter.

"It's easy," Kelly says, running through the basic ingredients: quinoa, black beans, corn, onion, garlic, cilantro, lime, cumin and ancho chile powder. "I'll write down the proportions for you later. You cook quinoa often?" and then he's in a back-and-forth exchange with her about quinoa's protein content and how it's a great way to get fiber and good carbs into a meat-based diet like the one he uses for his in-training fighters like Tommy and Marco.

Brendan interrupts to ask Tommy about his weight. "I swear, I think you've put on a couple more pounds of muscle weight in the last week, Tommy. You gonna weigh in okay?"

"He's fine," Frank says when it's clear that Tommy's not going to do more than nod and eat more eggplant. "One-eighty-nine-point-two, he can draw that down in a week."

"Four pounds plus," Brendan says, his brows drawing together.

"I'm on it, brother! Trust me," Frank ripostes, mock-wounded. "Did I ever let _you _get too far away from the limit?"

"Nope. I was too afraid of your bullwhip," Brendan says. Tommy snorts, apparently in sympathy.

"That was _such_ a pain," Tess says, rolling her eyes. "I couldn't have chips in the house, he'd steal them and then get mad at me for buying them." She smiles at Tommy. "Tommy's much easier to deal with – he never sneaks anything. I think he's just better at the whole self-denial deal."

"Blame the nuns," Gilhooley says gravely, and they all laugh (even Tommy gives a mild snort of amusement), but it strikes Frank that Tess is probably right. And it's probably one reason Brendan's the healthier of the two brothers, emotionally speaking.

"Wait, so I'm the only Protestant in the room?" Kelly says. "Good Lord. I'm drinking _beer_. With _Catholics_. My granny would have told me, 'Girl, you're goin' straight to hell!'" Her accent has gone all hillbilly, and she and Tess laugh way too hard for the lame religious comment.

"Don't worry about the going to hell thing, it's just a running joke with those two," Brendan explains to Gilhooley, who just smiles a little out of the corner of his well-cut mouth and shrugs.

"I _could _go for some bacon," Tommy admits, having just dispatched two large chicken breasts, plus a mound of vegetables and another of quinoa, before starting on the grilled fruit. It's the first comment he's volunteered to the room at large all evening. "Or one of your Cokes, Tess."

"Bacon?!" Frank exclaims in horror. "Bacon will _kill_ you, man. Stay away from it."

"First thing I want after the tournament is a bacon cheeseburger and a Sam Adams," Tommy says. "And then some peach ice cream." He looks across the table at Kelly, and Kelly looks through her eyelashes at him, and then there's this weird _flash-pop-sizzle_ thing in the air, as if one of those old-time camera bulbs has just gone off.

"What was that?" Brendan says, looking up surprised. "Like a spark or something."

"Filament in the light bulb burned out?" Gilhooley suggests, but he's looking speculatively at Kelly, who's now industriously cutting up chicken, letting the wings of her hair fall down over her cheeks. Tommy calmly reaches over to the toothpick holder on the table, takes one and starts chewing on it meditatively, and Frank knows that's the limit of Tommy's conversational ability for now.

No wonder Tommy had looked so horrified when Frank suggested saying something extravagant to let the girl know how Tommy felt – Tommy doesn't really_ talk_, much less say the kind of things he really needs to say in order to get over the kind of miffed Kelly seems to have going on.

As the meal winds down, Brendan's two little girls beg to leave the table so Tess lets them go, and Kelly says she'll help with cleanup. While they're packing up food and putting dishes into the dishwasher, Brendan kisses his wife in passing and leads them into the den, where on TV the Phillies are currently beating the Nationals in DC. Frank doesn't care much for baseball, which he finds too static; the only sports he can watch on TV are ones full of action – rugby, mostly, or maybe sometimes World Cup soccer. But Brendan loves it, and once confided that Pirates baseball was one of the few good things he and Tommy had shared with their dad, so if Brendan wants Tommy to hang out he'll find a game on TV.

"Wait, we're not watching the Pirates?" Frank asks.

"Not on TV tonight. And also, I love watching the Phillies lose," Brendan says, and flashes a smug grin at Gilhooley.

"Nah, score's tied," Joe says, shaking his head. "There's time for them to get it in gear."

"Could happen," Tommy says. "The Nats are havin' a bad year."

They watch half an inning, in which the Phillies strand one guy on first base and score nothing, and Frank's getting bored despite the trash-talking between Brendan and the cop, when Tess and Kelly come back into the room, and there's a to-do about collecting up the kids, and telling the kids good night, and it's bathtime, and Frank starts paying attention to the baseball game again because it's better than the unnecessary cutesiness going on regarding Brendan's girls.

While Tess is putting the girls to bed, and Brendan and Joe are gently ribbing each other about the Pirates and the Phillies, Frank goes into the kitchen for a bottle of club soda, not bothering to turn on the light. As he's taking the cap off, he hears the voices. They're on the deck, and it's so unusual for Tommy to be saying anything at all, as distant as he's been all night, that he stops to listen.

"How come you never called me back?" Tommy is saying in this pseudo-casual voice that nevertheless signals how important the answer to the question is.

"Oh, for God's sake!" That girl Kelly sounds exasperated. "Like I need to listen to more excuses about why you didn't call me all the time you were gone."

"I did call you the night I came back. I called three times," Tommy says, and there's an edge of something in his voice, the forlorn sound of teenage lonely that Frank's half-forgotten, but only half. "That Sunday night."

"That was the night my phone got wet," Kelly snaps back. "And since I got a new cell phone with a new carrier, I suppose we'll never know whether you really called me or not."

"Quit bein' so bitchy," Tommy says, dropping 'forlorn' and picking up 'whiny.'

"You do not get to tell me what to do," Kelly answers, and now she sounds like a teenager too.

"That's right, I don't. I'm not your daddy," Tommy says, bitterly.

"You _sure as hell _ain't my daddy_,_" Kelly says, and clearly she's gone from exasperated to really mad. "For one thing, he would never have taken advantage of a girl the way you did."

"Oh, 'taken advantage,' my ass."

"It wasn't even so much the sex," Kelly goes on. "It was the _I love you_ part followed by the ditching me and never calling me part, with me sitting around hoping you weren't dead in a ditch someplace. And here I thought your honor meant something to you."

_Well, this is getting interesting_, Frank thinks. He settles back against the refrigerator and sips club soda.

"That was a low blow," Tommy says, "but then I guess you got a pretty good idea of where a guy's balls are. You never seemed to miss when you were grabbin' for mine. Hope the cop knows what he's in for."

"You bastard," Kelly says, low. "Like you didn't grab first."

"You _liked_ me grabbing," Tommy says. "Don't pretend you didn't."

"Oh, I liked it all right. But then, I'm an idiot."

"Nice dress, by the way," Tommy says in this deadpan voice that somehow carries the sting of a slap. "You look like a stripper."

"Oh, _this _is rich," Kelly shoots right back, annoyed, "grief about my clothes from a guy who won't wear anything with fastenings – " Frank, surprised, looks down at his own t-shirt and mesh shorts, similar to what Tommy's wearing, and shrugs, "and I guess you ought to _know_ about strippers since your girlfriend is one. Does she have a pole in her apartment?"

_Really. Now that's even more interesting_. Frank has all kinds of curiosity about Tommy's personal arrangements. Brendan had mentioned a girlfriend, but not a stripper girlfriend.

"Oh, for Chrissakes, Jen is not a stripper. She tends bar, and she's training to fight. And she's _not _my girlfriend. I don't know where the hell you picked up that dumbass idea, but it's not true."

"Tell it to the Marines, you asshole," Kelly says, sounding madder. "Oh, _that's_ right, they don't wanna know your name."

"Well, speaking of strippers, see if you can manage to hang on to _your_ panties tonight, baby," Tommy says in that sarcastic rasp of his. "They have this habit of falling down."

_This is like daytime soap opera_, Frank thinks, letting the corners of his mouth curl up with amusement.

There's a beat of silence, and then Kelly says, "Not a problem. I don't really see _Joe_ ripping them off me. Since this is only a second date and not, you know, a declaration of _undying love_ or something." She walks two steps toward the door; Frank can hear her heels on the wood of the deck.

"Nice Protestant girl like you layin' it down so fast, what's up with that? And tell me, is he _good_, or are you just _easy_?" The sarcasm is evident, but there's something else in Tommy's tone, something pained and vulnerable he's trying not to show, and the voice has suddenly gone just a bit higher in pitch, almost boyish.

Another little pause, then Kelly's voice low and vicious – and hurt. "Just for that nasty little crack I oughta fuck him six ways from Sunday, up one side and down the other. I think I'd enjoy that."

"You probably would, it don't take much to make you come your brains out."

_Hell, this is like cable, _Frank thinks to himself. _I need another beer and some popcorn._

"Look here, Conlon, you don't have a leg to stand on with this shit. You got me outnumbered in the sex partners department eleven to one, and I don't know _how_ you learned the stuff you know that makes women come their brains out, but it sure as hell wasn't something _I _taught you."

Frank doesn't know women very well, but he knows that if you manage to make a woman start sounding the indignant way Kelly sounds right now, it might be best to simply head for the hills. Apparently Tommy is clueless, and he digs himself in deeper.

"So you came over here to flaunt your tits and your new boytoy at me, just on the off chance that I might be jealous? Now that's classy, baby."

_Boytoy? Quite a demeaning word to describe an experienced cop with chiseled features and an air of physical competence. And Tommy's been sending death ray glares in Joe Gilhooley's direction since the minute the guy showed up. He's jealous, all right. And he's right about that dress too, it's a tad hoochie-mama for a second date. Even **I **noticed her boobs. _

"You have no right, _no right_, to say one word to me about who I date. Or when, or how." Silence; Tommy's run out of things to say. "Not considering your own track record. So if you're finished throwing sarcastic bullshit at me, I am going to go and enjoy the rest of my evening."

There's the click of heels on the deck, and then they stop at the sound of Tommy's voice, soft and pained again. "Just don't sleep with him, okay? Please."

Kelly doesn't answer; she starts walking again. Frank fades further into the kitchen, which is even darker now with the advent of twilight outside. Must be close to nine now. Kelly sweeps through the kitchen fast on the way to the front door, but Frank sees her wipe her cheeks with her hands. Mindful of Tommy's privacy, he's starting to drift toward the front of the house, where Brendan is saying something cheerful to Kelly, when he hears it: the irregular thunk of something hitting the house repeatedly.

_Tommy_, he thinks, resigned, setting down his soda. This was the major reason he'd been so reluctant to take Tommy on as a trainee fighter – Tommy's temper and his habit of using it to power his fists. Though there were, to be completely honest, other reasons too. He's seen the whole progression of Tommy's emotion this evening: first, his discomfort and attempt to withdraw denied by Brendan, his sullen silence punctuated with glares, then his almost undercover drift to the deck, away from the convivial company and away from the nieces he adores. Then his stinging verbal attack on Kelly – and now the rage. Thank God Tommy is obsessive about his diet, because breaking it for a beer or two at dinner might have made things frighteningly worse.

How is everybody else missing this noise? Five, no, six thumps – no, _nine_, spaced out exactly like the start of one of Tommy's obsessive heavy-bag drills, associated with bad moods and rainy days. Frank knows it like he knows the layout of his own gym, and with no further hesitation he's out the kitchen door and tackling an obliviously angry Tommy to the deck, pulling Tommy's left arm into a hold that is going to be excruciating. The shoulder's long healed from Sparta, but Frank's betting the ranch Tommy remembers how vulnerable he is in this position.

Tommy in a fury is so inarticulate and so physical, so completely into his body, that even Frank, drawing on all his knowledge of pressure points and the physics of wrestling, has trouble keeping him subdued. But finally Frank's repeated admonition, "Don't make me pop your shoulder, Tommy," hindered by the firehose blast of adrenaline in Tommy's veins, makes its slow way into the brain, and he finally goes still, giving two resentful slaps of the hand on the flat deck surface, loud and hollow, hard enough that Frank knows it has to sting.

Tommy's regained a word or two, gasping from where he lies pretzeled up on the deck. "Fuck off."

Brendan is suddenly speaking from the kitchen door, from behind them, "What the hell is going on out here? Keep it down, the kids are in bed."

"Sorry," Frank says, letting go of Tommy unwillingly. Tommy's still tense as stretched wire, muscles twitching under Frank's hand, and Frank's not at all sure Tommy won't simply turn and start pounding him in frustration.

Brendan must get a look at Tommy's face, because his annoyance level drops to concern. "T, you okay?" He comes over, kneels, and puts a hand on Tommy's shoulder, and then Frank lets go completely and gets to his feet.

"Fuck _off,_ I said." As soon as Frank's clear, Tommy's on his feet too, leaving poor Brendan to stand up looking totally confused. "_You,_" Tommy says venomously to Frank, but Frank's not planning on putting up with any more bullshit.

"Yeah, me. Come on, let's go work this out." Frank practically manhandles Tommy out the door, apologizing over his shoulder to Brendan and getting way more enjoyment than he really should out of the feel of the muscles of Tommy's back under his hand.

At the gym he makes Tommy drink a bottle of water while he puts on gloves, and then sticks him in front of an old-school leather heavy bag. "Quit when your arms get heavy, or when you're done hitting, whichever comes sooner." Forty minutes later, Tommy's still going and Frank's just watching, seeing the emotion running loose in Tommy's system and wondering how hot a fuel it is, how long it will power the machine.

Twenty minutes after that, Frank calls a halt as he sees that Tommy is in fact nearly spent now, not that he would have quit before Frank insisted.

He tosses Tommy a towel and another bottle of water, letting him lie panting on the mat for a little while longer. Looking at Tommy – long since stripped down to shorts and bare feet – lying supine and sweaty and gorgeously sculpted is a little dangerous when there's nothing else around to catch Frank's attention, so Frank goes into the office and gets another couple of cold waters out of the fridge, plus another dry towel. He turns out some of the fluorescents in the main room, on the theory that it's easier to open up in dim light. Comes back out, sits on the mat not far from Tommy's feet. Time to be the Jedi Master of MMA. It's what he does, after all. "Okay, now you talk."

Tommy makes a noise of denial.

"Nope. Nope, you're not gonna pull that on me. Okay, I'll ask you questions. You feeling better now?"

"Yeah."

"Did you hurt your hand, trying to kill the wall?"

"Fuck off, Frank."

"What was that all about? And don't say it's none of my business, because it _is_ my business. I'm your coach. What's affecting your mind affects your training. And I know better, now, than to just let you stew in it, because you push too hard when you're stewing. Let it out, okay?"

He is quiet for a few moments while Tommy digests that. Tommy's a visual/kinesthetic learner; he has to absorb knowledge by seeing and doing. Brendan had been right to tell Frank that Tommy lives in his eyes and his body and his heart – Frank would have seen it for himself eventually, assuming that he wouldn't have gotten pissed off with Tommy's sheer bloody-mindedness. He has realized that the behavior that looks like disengagement and rule-flouting in Tommy is actually the self-protective detachment of a kid who has learned never to settle in to a good thing, because good things don't last.

Tommy's still not talking. Frank will jump-start things, then. "Okay, I'll get to the point. I overheard part of your conversation with Kelly. Didn't mean to, but I heard it. And I'm pretty sure this was the girl you were talking about last week, right?"

Tommy covers his eyes with one hand and stays silent. Finally he sighs, and nods.

_Yippee, communication. Sort of. _ "I didn't understand last week," Frank tells him. "How deep that went. I thought it was a minor spat, which depending on the girl might last and might not. But this... you love her. I get that now." He pauses a minute. "So tell me what happened."

Miracles still happen: Tommy talks. He goes through the entire thing, from meeting Kelly in March to Kelly's flipout on Saturday night, in simple words. But the feelings show through, and for the first time Frank is starting to realize how much of a protective casing Tommy's belligerent exterior is.

"So what the hell do I do?" Tommy asks. His voice has this sort of _I'm doomed_ quality to it now, with the full knowledge that he's screwed up and he's sorry and it still might not be enough to fix things. And Frank knows all about _that_.

"Well, for one thing, you're going to have to beg her to forgive you. So did you screw the stripper or not?"

Tommy sits up, instantly mad. "A, Jen is _not my girlfriend_, B, she's not a stripper, and C, I didn't fuck her. I don't know why nobody believes me on that."

"A lot of guys would have done it and lied about it, and you know that," Frank reminds him. "And if your girl's been lied to about it in the past, she's probably wary about being lied to again."

"Yeah, okay. Makes sense. But she should know I wouldn't."

"Don't say 'should know.' Maybe she knows with her head but she doesn't trust anybody? On that particular subject, anyway. And if you've slept around and she hasn't, then maybe she's feeling... God, I don't know. I don't get women, Tommy." This is the third time, maybe, that Frank's said this phrase, and he doesn't want to be more specific. Military guys can be weird about this sort of thing. "And another thing: you weren't sweet-talking her by any means. You were nasty."

"She started it."

"No, you did. Not that it matters who started it."

"She started it by goin' out with _that _joker after having sex with _me_ on Saturday," Tommy says viciously. "But I shouldn'ta told you that."

"That's not serious," Frank says immediately. "That might, actually, have been to make you jealous. I don't get the feeling she's invested there."

"No," Tommy says. "I was watching her. She likes him, she wasn't fakin' that."

"Okay, fair enough. But _you _made her cry. She still cares what you think, what goes on between you. You got a window of opportunity here. But the longer you're cold to her the more that window closes. I don't _care_ what she said to you, you have to be the one pleading for forgiveness. Maybe more than once."

"I'm scared that I'm just like Pop," Tommy says, miserable, and Frank instantly knows that this is at the crux of all Tommy's issues, all of them. Shit happens to people. Loss and mistakes and pain happen to every human being that lives long enough, and the real question is how will that human being deal with suffering? Frank's had to learn how to deal, too. His answer is to throw himself into making other people better, to chase after excellence, to control what he can. Tommy's answer, inadequate as it might have been sometimes, could be worse. When it's his own pain, he runs. When it's someone else's, he wades in hip deep to help.

Frank opens his mouth, trying to think how he can say this. He doesn't really know, but he'll have to fumble through it. "You have a choice, Tommy. You get to choose how you react to the shit in your life, okay? You control your response. I don't think you're like your dad. When things got bad for him, and this is my take on the little bit Brendan has told me about growing up, he headed into the bottle, which made it easy for him to take out his hurts on the people close to him. You are not like that. You have never chosen to be like that."

"Yes, I have," Tommy admits. "Maybe not with fists. Or screaming my head off. But I have." He sighs, and then, unbelievably, he comes out with some snippet of the catechism. "The root of sin is in the heart of man, in his free will."

Frank tries again. "Yeah, it's a choice. Look, I see how you deal with your own problems – you run. And that can hurt people. But if somebody needs help, you give it. I know you do. And here's the thing: your pain is just as worthy of attention as someone else's. It is okay to treat your hurts with the same sympathy and concern that you would somebody else's, and let someone else help you. We are all stuck on this big spinning ball in space, we have to help each other out, and sometimes that means accepting help as well as giving it. You listening to me?"

Tommy is quiet, looking at his hands. He bites his lower lip. Nods. Inhales and exhales, slowly. "You're saying I need to start with taking care of myself. Getting therapy. Right?"

"Yes. Starting with that. And I think, I really believe, that when you can deal with some of the shit you've been through, you won't need to worry so much about turning out like your dad." He waits a beat, and then adds, "As a practical matter, you might want to think about avoiding alcohol."

Tommy nods again. "I don't miss it that much. I like a beer now and then, but I don't... I mean, if it's the difference between being a human and a monster like Pop used to be, I can skip the booze. No problem."

"That's another choice you make. You figure out what kind of person you are, what kind of person you want to be, and you _be that person_." It's simple, but like most truly simple things, it isn't easy. "I know who you are, and it's a good person, Tommy."

"Thank you," Tommy says, quiet.

"I am the Jedi Master," Frank declares. "And you're _welcome_, brother." Frank would like another beer himself; it is hard damn work wrangling a stubborn Irish ex-Marine with a fucked-up head, even if Frank is good at it.

"Hey, Frank?"

Uh-oh. Now what? He raises his eyebrows to indicate that Tommy can ask.

"So how'd you get to be a Jedi Master? And how come you didn't set UFC on fire back in the day?" Tommy wants to know. "I mean, you're still good. How come that didn't translate to a championship belt?"

This is a long and ugly story, and very few people know the whole of it. Brendan knows; he was around the circuit back then. But Frank doesn't want Tommy getting distracted by the painful parts of Frank's past instead of focusing on the work Tommy has to do. So he'll try not to get bogged down in the details.

"Long story," he starts. "The Cliff's Notes version of it is that I let my temper get the best of me in a bar parking lot about ten years ago, and I got the crap beaten out of me by a couple of gay-bashers with tire irons." Frank points to the scar on his cheekbone, watching Tommy's face for signs of revulsion. There is none, just a subtle sort of surprise. "Broken bottle there; I nearly lost that eye. They had to remove my spleen. Spent the next six months in rehab for broken bones. By the time I was back to full health, I didn't want to fight anymore."

"Your temper, huh?" Tommy says.

Frank hadn't been going to tell this part, but he decides to. Let the chips fall where they might. "The week before that, my... lover... had come out to his dad. It didn't go well, you might say, and on the way back to our apartment, Alex drove his car into the side of an overpass. Apparently deliberately. I was about as wrecked as the car. Didn't have the best judgment." Frank has so much practice by now at talking about Alex without thinking of him that it's almost easy. Almost.

Tommy blinks twice. He says nothing, but he gives Frank his open gaze, and Frank sees the sympathy there.

"So I became a Jedi Master and I get to tell animals like you and Marco what to do all day. It's an ego boost," Frank says, attempting to lighten the moment.

Tommy won't have any of that, not yet. "Never been anybody else for you?"

The pain's back, after so long, and Frank feels the empty hole of Alex-gone like a rip in his lungs. He sucks in some air and shakes his head. "Maybe someday there will be someone else. For now, no." He points a finger at Tommy. "Which is why you gotta be patient. And persistent. Wait for your moment, your opportunity, and take it. No fear. With love, you gotta be all in."

Tommy nods. He smiles a little. "I know that strategy, at least."

**A/N: So yeah, I think Frank could be gay. Though I could be wrong. And I also happen to think Frank is awesome: wise, generous, unselfish, possessed of a lot of emotional intelligence. Hope he comes across that way.**

**I stand by my assertion that people with Irish genetics can be some of the most stubborn people on the planet. Not to say that others can't be just as stubborn (I'm married to a guy with a Scottish-German background, who would be happy to argue with a frickin' sign post, and I hear Italians can be as bad), but as an ethnic group, well... let's just say, _I'm_ not backing down. Go ahead, argue with me – that'll just prove my point. :)**

**The Phillies did win that Thursday game, BTW. I check these things, when I can. :)**


	45. Ch 45: Jen, in the Bar, with the Machete

**Ch 45 Jen, in the Bar, with the Machete**

**As always, I claim only my own characters. Sorry for the delay with this... I got sidetracked. Writing a sex scene for the future (hey, it was in my head, I had to get it OUT before I forgot all the steamy details). It's comin' up, don't worry.**

**And darlings, I crave reviews. Plllease? Big puppy dog eyes over here...**

Kelly tells Brendan good night, manages to tear Joe away from the Phillies-Nats game, and they go out to Joe's silver Sentra in the driveway. She's stopped in the bathroom long enough to repair the damage that tears did to her face, and to put on a little bit of her sheer red lipstick.

She's so mad at Tommy Conlon she could just _spit._ Or maybe cry some more. Because he's such a pain in the ass, such a gorgeous and mostly sweet and totally _clueless _pain in the ass, and God help her, she still cares so much about him. The last thing he just said to her, a plea for her not to sleep with Joe, is ringing in her ears, and even though she had absolutely no intention (nor, to be honest, any inclination) to sleep with Joe, the sound of Tommy's voice when he said it is just ripping her up, because it sounds like he cares too.

She fights down an impulse to tell Joe she's sorry, she's just not up to the date tonight, really, and can she have a raincheck for karaoke because she'd love to sing with him sometime, but that guy that broke her heart, remember? Well, he's still breaking her heart and pissing her off and turning her on, and that just doesn't bode well for a relationship with Joe. But she knows she can't even begin to get two words of that out of her mouth without sounding completely insane, so she lets it go.

When Joe's closed her door and walked around to the driver's side to let himself in, he puts the keys in the ignition and says, "Who is Tommy Conlon, really?"

Hearing Tommy's name makes Kelly jump. "What do you mean?" she asks cautiously, hoping her increased pulse isn't noticeable.

Joe cocks an eyebrow at her and says, "Well, for one thing he's such a... a _glowering hulk_. He's Brendan's brother, have I got that right?" Kelly nods. "And he's in training for something? I missed that part."

"Oh." Kelly explains about MMA and Sparta – which Joe turns out to have heard of, but not to know anything about. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, it was kind of weird," Joe goes on. "I went into the bathroom to wash my hands, and when I came out he was standing there in the hall like he was waiting for me to come out, and then he leaned up close to my ear and sort of growled, 'You lay an ungentlemanly finger and I will _fucking end you_.' End quote. Excuse my language."

"It's okay," Kelly tells him. "I've been known to use the word myself, when annoyed beyond measure." She's thinking that again,Tommy was taking a protective role a step too far, but still, there's a little tiny bit of warmth in her center at the thought of him using those lethal fists of his in her defense. There's some amusement, too – Tommy might be a considerate lover, but polite and gentlemanly? _No_. Gentlemen do not rip panties, for example, and if she wanted to think about it she could probably come up with dozens of other ways he is delightfully ungentlemanly.

Not that that's a good idea, thinking about Tommy being excitingly ungentlemanly. It does things to her body.

"Ah," Joe says noncommittally. "He looks ex-military."

Kelly does not explain. She says, "He is." If Joe wants to do some detective work, he's on his own. He's got resources. She doesn't talk to outsiders about Conlon family history. She probably shouldn't even know it herself.

And suddenly, to her horror, she's hearing the echo of her own voice saying those ugly, shaming words to Tommy, reminding him of what she knows is a painful matter to him, his dishonorable discharge, and she's nauseous with guilt. She'd lashed out with the worst thing she could think of, but no matter what he said to her, she should never have said that. Ever. _Ever. _"Excuse me a minute," she says, pulling her new cell phone out. "I need to send a text – I'll be done soon. I'm sorry."

She thumbs in Tommy's number, which she knows by heart, and types her message, "Hey." Hits send. Maybe he'll text back and she can grovel.

Two minutes later there's nothing, so she goes ahead with her abject apology anyway. If he's mad enough, maybe he won't read it, but maybe he will. "I must apologize for the horrible ugly thing I said about the Corps not wanting to know you. It was mean & I only said it to hurt you because I was hurt. But that is no excuse. I am sorry. Very extremely miserably sorry." She closes her slider phone, and then opens it again. Texts, "I AM STILL MAD AT YOU. But very sorry anyway & wish wish wish I had not said it."

_What else can I say?_ she thinks. _There's nothing. I can only say I'm sorry and I'll never do it again. _She drops her phone into her purse and adjusts the bodice of her red tribal-print maxi dress to be more modest. It had been a mistake to wear it – when she'd put it on, she'd been thinking, again, that she wanted Tommy to wish he hadn't left her. She _had _wanted to flaunt her cleavage and Joe-the-cute-detective, Tommy had called that one exactly right.

Now she's remembering last Saturday, Tommy chasing her out to the car, telling her he was sorry, he was so sorry, and she had rebuffed him as hard as she could. She looks out the window to hide her brimming eyes. _None of that, missy_, she tells herself. _Go and enjoy Joe's company. You can't fix anything right now. _

She blinks hard, turns back to Joe, and starts telling him a story involving a patient whose three-year-old had somehow wedged half a banana down in between her leg and her cast, and they'd had to remove the cast to get the fast-decaying banana out. Everyone in the office had been extremely grateful when that slimy black banana left the building, double-bagged so it wouldn't stink up the Dumpster. (She shouldn't tell stories about patients either, but she rationalizes that she's not using names so it shouldn't matter.) They get into a discussion of the worst-smelling thing they've each had to deal with in their jobs, Kelly's story including various bodily fluids and Joe's referring to a safe containing a drug stash, a stack of cash, and, inexplicably, a package of lunch meat, locked up for more than six months since its owner skipped town. By the time they're pulling in to the parking lot of The Palomino, they're both cracking up.

"A country and western place?" she asks, incredulous. "In Philly?"

"The karaoke's good," Joe says, getting out and coming around to open her door. "The live music's better. Too bad they don't have anything live tonight. But it's a fun place."

Kelly's never been much of a bar girl. The last time she'd been in a bar had been shortly after graduating from college; when she'd been dating Mike she'd been working nights, so bars hadn't been part of their courtship although hindsight lets her see that Mike had never given them up. Kelly likes the girly cocktails she shares with Tess, and she likes a glass of wine every now and then, but she's never been comfortable in a bar.

But karaoke, now, that changes the scene. She prepares herself to hear "Billie Jean" and "My Heart Will Go On" about a zillion times, while she considers what she might sing herself. The inside is kind of dive-y, lots of plain brown wood all over the place and horse silhouettes everywhere, but people are sitting at the tables laughing, and somebody is picking out a karaoke track.

Joe's asking her what she'd like to drink, and she answers her usual "Tom Collins, please." He finds a table for two not too close to the speakers, and goes to get drinks while she settles in. While she's waiting, a girl on the stage sings Pink's "So What" (badly) and Kelly slips her cell phone out of her purse to check her messages. She hasn't heard her phone ping with her message tone, but still. _Tommy._ Even the thought of getting a misspelled digital message in textspeak from him is making her crazy.

Nothing. She sighs and puts the phone away.

Joe comes back to the table with a beer and her Collins, and they chat some through a really awful set of three drunk college guys butchering Bon Jovi, Michael Jackson, and Nine Inch Nails. He tells her that he moved into his uncle's house after his divorce, partly to look after the house and partly to look after his elderly bachelor uncle. About his Uncle Mickey, sixty-two years old and still driving a squad car around, and Uncle Mickey's black and white cat, Oliver. "Oliver," Joe says, "does not _give a crap_. About _anything_, unless it comes in a cat food can. He claws curtains and sofas and rugs, and my bedspread, and I swear he's plotting to kill me because I have no tolerance for his tripping me every time I go in the kitchen. You can sit on the sofa next to him, and he'll look at you like you are something stuck on the bottom of a shoe. Unless you have kitty treats. But once those are gone, you are unworthy of his attention."

The chat moves on to people they'd been in the chorus with, and Joe gets on the subject of Ellis Rodgers, one of the other tenors and the subject of one of Kelly's crushes until she'd realized he was a kiss-and-tell addict. "Old Ellis," Joe says, sighing. "You know he's a lawyer in Boston, right? Still playing the field."

"Of course he is."

"He used to have nicknames for all the sopranos," Joe reminisces, and then he gives Kelly a wicked smile, which immediately makes her apprehensive as she asks what hers was. She might not want to know.

"Oh... well, you were known by the delightful name of 'Fort Knox.'" At Kelly's incomprehensive expression, he adds, "As in, 'locked up tighter than.'" Kelly rolls her eyes. Unbelievably, Ellis has the power to annoy her out of the past. "All that gold, and nobody can access it." Joe suddenly grins. "I think he tried to make you at a party once, and got shut down. He was indignant about it. Thus the nickname."

Kelly remembers that. "Of course I shut him down! He'd been all over Mariah not twenty minutes before that, and he was flat sloshed into the bargain. I do not play with playas."

"I kind of assume you're still like that," Joe says, looking a little embarrassed. "That you're, um, discriminating."

Yes, she tells him, but memories of her wanton behavior with Tommy are assaulting her now. He'd kissed her one time at the tattoo parlor, then two days later she'd poked at him until he told her he loved her, and not ten minutes after that she'd been on her back begging him to make love to her, and she _still_ can't say no to him. She sighs.

"Well, that's all right," Joe says, and smiles. "I'm a patient guy."

They discuss movies of the summer (very few of which she's seen), and favorite childhood treats, and the four years Joe's been working with his partner. It's all very pleasant, and Joe is funny, and still Kelly is a mess, thinking about things she ought not to have said to Tommy. But then Joe says he's ready to go pick out some music, so he goes to do that and Kelly decides while he's gone that she'll get herself another drink, so she heads to the bar.

The bartender turns around, and it's Jen. Purple tank top, long silver earrings, jeans, girl-biceps, tattoos, smoky eye makeup. Jen is gorgeous and tough and competent, a perfect physical match for Tommy, and it hits Kelly right in the gut again, the stepping-off-a-ledge way it feels to think about the two of them together. She has to suck in some air and blink hard before she can answer Jen's "Hi! It's Kelly, right?"

Kelly nods. "Yeah, hi. I didn't know you worked here." So maybe Mike had been wrong about her being a stripper. In which case, she owes Tommy another fifty-nine apologies, not to mention Jen herself.

"What can I get you?" Jen wants to know.

Another Tom Collins seems completely inadequate at this point. Kelly blinks again. She's still mad at Tommy for being so insensitive and leaving her and not apologizing and for fucking her blind up against a wall (there, see, more erotic and ungentlemanly behavior) in an almost-public place, but she's also starting to think that she's made an enormous mistake by not letting him talk to her. She's always known that talking comes hard to him, and if he wants to talk, it's a rare and trusting thing. But here she's been too self-absorbed and whiny to let him talk to her because she wanted to keep her mad going longer. Well, _just hell_. She is going to have to suck it up and get over it.

Not that she's letting him off the hook for a really good apology, not at all. She suffered too much while he was gone to just let it go. But at least now she wants to _hear_ the apology.

"I don't know," she tells Jen. "Something with lots of alcohol. But not Scotch, it tastes like ashtrays."

"A mixed drink?" Jen asks, and Kelly can see the_ can't shoot the whiskey_ judgment behind Jen's eyes. "You like daiquiris or Cosmopolitans? Or fruitinis?"

Kelly wrinkles her nose. "Not in the mood for those. Those are beachy funtime drinks," she explains. "This is not beachy funtime, this is time for serious drinking."

Jen thinks a minute. "Long Island Iced Tea?" she suggests.

"I think I like that," Kelly says. "It comes in a big glass, right?"

"Yep," Jen says, eyeing her speculatively. "We make them with Limoncello instead of sour mix here, unless you'd prefer the sour mix. I have both, it's no problem."

Kelly shrugs. "I don't know the difference," she confesses.

"LIIT with Limoncello comin' up then," Jen says, and pulls a clean glass out of the cabinet. She pours liquid out of six different alcohol containers into the glass, adds Coke and ice, and then pours the entire thing into a silver shaker thingy. While she's shaking the mixture and decanting it back into the glass, she asks if Kelly enjoyed the fight last weekend.

Immediately, Kelly's whole body goes one deep pink blush, heat rushing to the surface of her skin. She flashes back to the sensation of the wall hard and cool against her back and Tommy a solid wall of muscle hard and warm against the front of her, hard and hot at her center, and she has to fight off a shudder of remembered ecstasy.

"Whoa," Jen says, and she laughs. "That good, huh? I will say, he looked pretty mind-whacked too when we walked in. _Damn_. Just my luck that the boy was already taken when I met him."

"_What?_" Kelly says. _Already taken_, what does Jen mean?

Jen adds a lemon slice to the glass and hands it over. "So. What the hell you doin' out with Dimples Man over there?" she says, nodding toward Joe, who's chatting with the DJ and waiting his turn. Her tone of voice is pleasant, but there's an edge to it. Jen is pissed off.

"Um..." Why does Jen care? "Why? What's wrong with him?"

"Dimples? Oh, he's a nice guy," Jen clarifies. "Cop, I think. He's in here every couple-three weeks, usually for karaoke or live bands. Maybe once a month. As far as what's wrong with him, not a _thing_ – except he's not Tommy."

Kelly takes a mouthful of her drink, forgetting that it isn't a real iced tea, and chokes on the high-octane alcohol in it. "Wow," she says, as her eyes water.

"Slow down with that, shorty, that's serious liquor. Especially if you're not used to it. So what's the deal?" Jen leans on the bar and fixes her with a gimlet stare. "Spit it out. 'Cause I'm Tommy's friend, I got his back, and you better have a good reason."

"What did you want to know again?" Kelly says, wiping moisture from underneath her eyes and trying to remember the question.

Jen sighs, and articulates her question exaggeratedly clearly. "Why. Are. You. With. That. Guy?"

"Joe? Well, he's a friend from college – we used to sing together. He's fun, he's nice, he's cute. And he makes me laugh. It's mostly just-friends stuff," Kelly says, realizing that it's true. Joe is all those things, fun and nice and cute and humorous, and even though there was a pleasant spark when she kissed him, since then she has spent a total of zero minutes thinking about kissing him again.

"Is he The One?" Jen asks, pointedly. "And what happened to the date with your ex?"

Kelly stares at her, perplexed by Jen's interest in the subject and by the fact that it's none of Jen's business, but she answers anyway. "At Star City Grille? That was not a date. That was a family thing we were doing together with the kids, because there is just no way I'm dating my fisty ex again, like ever. And as for Joe? No. Not only is he not The One, I don't even believe in that fairytale crap. I don't think there's just one person in the whole history of time that is the only romantic fit for each person, that's ludicrous. What if you never meet that person? The human race would die out. It's too difficult a concept."

"Oh yeah?" Jen says, and leans on the bar toward her.

"Yeah. I think that there are a number of people that each person might be compatible with, but the one that you commit to, that person becomes The One. It makes a connection between you that's hard to break. It's the decision to commit to that person that makes the bond," Kelly tells her.

Jen looks at her. "Huh," she says. Someone comes up to the bar to order drinks, and she turns to talk to that person while Kelly drinks more of her cocktail. (Slowly. It's good when you sip it.)

Is the problem really that she committed her heart before Tommy was ready to? She sighs. One of these days she's going to learn _not to be so stupid_.

Jen starts mixing a pitcher of appletinis for the set of gal pals in the corner, but she's talking to Kelly again. "Well, I'm glad you came in here tonight anyway, so I could rip you a new one. Quit putting that boy through hell, and let him apologize to you, willya? He's miserable."

"Who, Tommy?" It is _so weird_ having this conversation with Jen.

Jen stops mixing long enough to give Kelly a long incredulous look. "Who the hell do you think I mean? _Yes,_ Tommy. Quit bein' such a bitch to him, the poor guy's so confused he doesn't know whether to shit or go blind." She shakes her head and takes the pitcher down the end of the bar while Kelly stares at her. When Jen comes back, she puts her hands on her hips and demands, "Speaking of Tommy, how is he?"

"Don't you know?" Kelly blurts. "Did you break up or something?" Maybe they broke up and Tommy wasn't lying, Jen isn't his girlfriend anymore. She's instantly more cheerful at the idea of not having been lied to, especially over cheating, and then she reminds herself that her counselor has identified this as one of her issues. She might have been so deep into the issue that she forgot it was her issue and thought it was reality – that happens to her, she knows.

Jen raises her eyebrows just as someone from down the bar calls her for two draft beers. She goes to pull them, and when she comes back Joe is singing, trying his best to out-Sinatra "Fly Me to the Moon." He's good, but the song's a little too low for his voice. Jen says, "'Break up,' did you seriously just ask me that?" Kelly nods. "Do you not ever fucking _listen_ to the man? Hell, girl, we were never together. Where'd you get that idea?"

"Tommy's brother," Kelly says, faintly, feeling the top of her head get cold. Brendan wouldn't lie to her, and she's starting to believe Jen wouldn't either. And when Tommy lies... when Tommy lies, it's to say something doesn't hurt when it really does. Not about something he's done. If he's done something he shouldn't, he just keeps his mouth shut. All wrapped up in her issues, she's called _that_ one wrong too.

"Well, then, Tommy's brother was making up shit and talking out his ass. Not that I woulda minded bein' Tommy's girlfriend, I admit," Jen says. "I mean, _seriously_, have you not _seen _him? He is damn gorgeous. But I let the guy crash on my couch because I felt sorry for him not having a place to stay, not because we were bangin' each other stupid. Didn't he tell you this? Has he once again failed to grovel?"

Kelly, setting her drink down, lets her jaw fall. "Failed to grovel?"

"Well, the last time I saw him, he was running to catch you in the parking lot and planning to beg you to forgive him. He was _supposed_ to grovel," Jen says, frowning. "I _told_ him to grovel. Because he did kinda treat you like shit, and he was sorry about it."

Kelly shakes her head, trying to wrap her brain around this. "What? Why? I mean, why would you..." She can't even finish the question, because she's so confused.

Jen turns to another bar patron asking for beers and hands out a trayful of Michelobs from the chiller before she turns back to Kelly. She starts to say something to Kelly, who is beginning to have the awful, sick, sorry feeling that she has been _wrongwrongwrong_ and horribly unfair to Tommy, and then she seems to think better of it. She calls to someone in the back, "Mitchell? I need a break. Can you spell me for fifteen?"

A tall guy bearing a remarkable resemblance to Richard Petty (Kelly's dad had been a fan) comes out of the back and says, "You go on, hon," to Jen.

Jen comes out from behind the bar and grabs Kelly's arm, pulling her to her feet. "Bring your drink and come talk to me," she orders. Kelly obeys, following Jen to an empty booth away from the stage. Jen sits down and leans across the table. "Now. Tell me what the hell is going on. And do you even love him at all, or are you enjoying being a bitch?"

Kelly opens her mouth to deny being a bitch, and without warning bursts into tears. It's her usual cloudburst of crying, one good bucket-dumping of moisture and then the sobbing's pretty much over, just tears still trickling down. She picks her head up off the table, mops her face with the wad of napkins Jen's pulled out of the holder for her, and sighs. "Oh, God, I _am _a bitch. I am the world's worst. I said horrible things to him tonight."

"And what did he do?" Jen asks, crossing her arms.

"Called me a slut, pretty much. Which I have issues with," Kelly says, and is suddenly furious again. "He _knows _I have issues with being called a slut. I can't let him treat me like that."

Jen looks matter-of-fact. "Well, are you a slut?"

"No, I'm not a slut!" Kelly's about to explain indignantly, and then she decides not to. It is none of Jen's damn business... even if she's not really Tommy's girlfriend. She sits up straighter and crosses her arms, too. "Listen, I am going to be a horrible nosy judgy bitch and ask you: are you a stripper?"

"I work _here_, dumbass," Jen says. "Why?"

"Because my ex says that you are. That he used to go into Tailfeathers with the guys – I mean, he's a firefighter. Engine 6. Anyway, he was telling me about your tattoos."

Jen blinks and swallows, and it's the first time Kelly's seen her lose any composure at all. "I, um, used to work there." She looks straight across the table at Kelly. "Haven't worked there in almost three years, though. And I remember your mean-ass ex, too – he pinched a girl's thigh once during a lap dance and left her a bruise that lasted two weeks. Guys aren't supposed to even touch. Manager threw him out."

_Three years_, Kelly thinks. _Three years ago Tommy was in Iraq, or about to be deployed. He wasn't even on this coast._ Suddenly the world doesn't seem so damn awful anymore, despite the unwelcome news that Mike had been a bastard to some poor stripper (surprise, surprise). She sighs. "So how did you meet Tommy?"

"At the gym. What does it matter?"

"It doesn't, I guess. Why'd you quit Tailfeathers?"

Jen leans back in the booth. "Why do you think? I was sick of slimy men tryin' to paw my tits. I figured I could make just as much working as a bartender, once I got my license." She makes a face. "I was wrong, I don't make quite as much. But at least I don't have to flash my coochie anymore to get a paycheck."

Kelly, who has finally calmed down from crying enough to take another sip of her drink, spits it out rather than suck it down her windpipe, because she has _totally cracked up_, laughing so hard that she has to lean over against the wall to regain her equilibrium. When she's stopped coughing and laughing at the same time, she sits back up and wipes her eyes. _Again_. She probably looks like Taylor Momsen at the moment.

Jen is staring at her. "Do you do that all the time? Cry like a baby and then giggle?"

Kelly puts her head on one side and considers. "Yep, that's pretty much par for the course for me. I am emotional salad. I was on a very tight leash the day I ran into you guys at Star City, because I was going to die rather than let anybody know how I felt." She catches movement out of the corner of her eye – it's Joe, coming to check on her. "Hey, Dimples," she says to him, which only causes him to wrinkle his forehead.

"What, was that my chorus nickname?" he wants to know, casting Jen a curious glance.

"Nope. _She_ calls you that," Kelly says, and waves at Jen. "Jen, this is Joe Gilhooley. Joe, this is Jen Peretti. The bartender."

Jen sticks her hand out for Joe to shake. "Have a seat, Joe Gilhooley. I think I may continue to call you Dimples Man, but it's good to know the real one too." As Joe is sitting down next to Kelly, she says, "So do you have a nickname too, shorty?"

Joe laughs. Kelly rolls her eyes. "Never mind my nickname. I need to go sing now or something." She's suddenly feeling much more cheerful knowing that Tommy didn't meet Jen at Tailfeathers.

"Sing what?" Joe asks. "You got something in mind?"

"I absolutely do." She's thinking "Bitch," by Meredith Brooks, because it feels like herself right now. _I hate the world today...I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one._

"In a minute," Jen says. "Listen, Dimples, I hate to be rude but I need some convo with your date here. Girl talk. It's important. Maybe five more minutes. If you want another drink, go ask Mitchell at the bar for one, and tell him Jen said she'd cover it."

"Oh, you don't have to do that," Joe says, and he shoots Kelly a suspicious look, but he gets up and out of the booth anyway. "I'll just... go talk to Juwan a little while longer. He's the DJ," he explains to Kelly.

"Okay," Kelly says. When he's out of earshot she looks back at Jen and says, "Okay, look, I _know. _I've been a bitch. I'll apologize. I'll listen to him. I feel horrible about what I said already. But what you have to understand is that I have a history of letting my husband get away with all kinds of shit and not calling him on it. I'm absolutely calling Tommy on his. I'm not layin' down for him." She thinks about that a second and then adds, "Well, not again."

Jen's eyebrows go up, and Kelly thinks about it some more. The cocktail is refining her thought processes to a remarkable degree. She goes on. "Well, not unless he apologizes for moving in with you and letting me suffer and not calling me and screwing me up against the wall – "

"You didn't _like_ the wall?" Jen interrupts, leaning across the table toward her. "You blushed sixteen shades of red just now when I asked you about the fight. Not the wall, the fight. But obviously _you_ were thinking about the wall."

"No, the wall was great," Kelly admits, and takes another slug of iced tea. "The wall was incredibly awesome. It was everybody _knowing _about the wall that pissed me off. Because now everybody thinks I'm a slut."

"No, now everybody thinks you're lucky."

Kelly, surprised, looks back at Jen. "So everybody knows how awesome he is in bed? He's like the King of Cock, which you probably know already. I've never come so many times in my life. That absolute _bastard_." This is the best iced tea ever, so she drinks some more. It's like her Nana's iced tea, only more lemony. Yum. No, wait, it's not really iced tea, it's alcohol, and it occurs to her what she's doing: drinking alcohol and talking about sex.

Oh, God, she's going to go to hell. She is definitely going to hell now. "But what I don't see is why you let him go when he's such heaven in bed." She shakes her head, waves her hand. "Not bed. I mean fucking. You know. Oh God, I am_ so going to hell._"

Jen looks at her and then at her glass. "Shorty, you are drunk. You're suddenly all potty mouth instead of proper. I had no idea you were such a lightweight."

"Hundred and twenty-two. Which is bad," Kelly confides. "I should lose ten pounds. That's what I weighed when I got married." She thinks of something. "But Tommy said he liked my ass, so maybe I should leave it alone." Then she thinks of something else, something sad. "But then he dumped me and moved in with you, so maybe not. Maybe I should go on Atkins. No more almond bear claws for me, no matter who buys 'em."

"Did you hear the part about him not sleepin' with me?" Jen says. "Oh, God, you _are_ drunk. You're gonna be totally shit-faced in about three minutes, so listen to me _now_, bitch: Tommy did not fuck me, okay? He didn't. And it's not like I didn't give him the opportunity."

"What?" Kelly says, sitting back up. These damn booths are slippery. "He didn't?"

Jen sighs, loudly. "Okay, words of one syllable: He. Did. Not. Fuck. Me. Are we clear now?"

"Why not?"

"Well, he _did _kiss me. And I even had my hand on his junk and everything. But he moved it off and he said something sappy about sex when you're in love with somebody, which I assume is you, shorty, so quit givin' him shit about it. He was all romantical and shit about it, too. Said he didn't want to cheat on his own heart."

"Ohmigod, he said that?" That is the sweetest thing. She's always known how sweet he is, so sweet under the hardass exterior. "Waitaminnit. You had your hand on his junk?"

Jen doesn't seem embarrassed at all. "Yeah. It's nice junk, as far as that goes. I mean, most of the time junk is just junk. Sausage and beans, it's all the same, you know? But his is nice, as far as I could tell through his pants." She tilts her head and looks at Kelly's dress. "You're about two inches from a nip slip, by the way. Just so you know."

"You had your hand on his _junk?_" Kelly repeats, picturing it. "Hands off, bitch, that's mine."

"Well, I know that _now_," Jen says. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." She shrugs. "Oh well. Listen, fix your dress, okay, your boobs are like hanging out."

Kelly adjusts her bodice. "You had your _hand _on his junk," Kelly says again, amazed. "And he said no? Holy crow, Jen, why'd you even tell me that? You didn't have to."

Jen shrugs again. "Because, shorty, he's my friend and he loves you and he's miserable. Besides which, I'm starting to like you. You're insane. Look, just make_ up_ with him already, okay? Or I'll have to hunt you down and swing a machete at your head."

"Don't you listen?" Kelly says. "I told you: I can't just let it go. He has to apologize. He has to mean it. He has to promise not to do it again. And he has to get _better_, for the love a' Pete, and I mean go to counseling. I have enough crap to deal with on my own, I can't deal with his too. I cannot put up with somebody else's issues while I am going to therapy._ I _need to get better." She squints one eye at Jen. "Of course, all bets are off if he makes my panties fall off again. He's bad to do that."

Jen shakes her head. "Where did you grow up, girl, Kentucky? West fucking Virginia? You sound like an extra from 'Coal Miner's Daughter'."

"Tommy Lee Jones," Kelly says, dreamily. "Good Lord, I'd prob'ly crawl six miles o' bad road to go out with _that _man. He's hot. Well, when he was younger he was hot. Not so much good-lookin', but sexy as hell."

Jen, looking appalled, reaches over and swipes Kelly's glass, still about a third full. "You cannot have any more of that. Like, for the next _four months _you're off liquor, you've had enough."

"I know," Kelly says, as her stomach starts to rebel. "I don't feel so great right at the moment. Too much alcohol too fast. I'll probably hurl." She sits up again. "Ugh. I should go throw up right now before any more of it gets into my system. Food underneath it will only do so much." She catches Jen's stunned look. "What? I'm a nurse. I might be stupid in my personal life, but I know stuff, okay?"

"Right." Jen checks her watch. "Mitchell's been generous, I've had twenty minutes. Gotta get back to work."

She walks back to the bar, and Kelly manages to make it to the toilet before she vomits up most of that _So-Not-Like-Nana's_ iced tea. When she comes out, adjusting her dress again, Joe meets her in the little hall outside the restrooms, solicitous. He takes her back to a table and gets her a plain Coke, which helps. He wants to know why she had such a hugely alcoholic drink on top of her Tom Collins, and on top of the beer she had at dinner, and all she can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time, and she's not all_ that _drunk.

Well, she's still sort of drunk. But not quite as bad. She feels good enough to get up and nail the hell out of Tina Turner's "Better Be Good To Me," because he really should. She might be, as Tina puts it, a prisoner of his love, and captured by his spell, but she deserves not to be lied to, and she deserves to know what's going on with him. _So there_.

She finishes, and there's clapping. She trips while stepping down from the little stage, and the DJ catches her, and she has to adjust her bodice again, but it was fun. Joe comes over to grab her arm. "You okay?"

She nods. "Yeah. Let's dance, okay? It's Dance Time."

"No, I don't think so," Joe says, suppressing a smile. "I think maybe you need to go home."

"I'm having fun," she says. She is, now that she knows for sure there was nothing physical going on between Jen and Tommy.

"I can tell. Hey, listen, we need to go say goodnight to Jen. She's been so nice – she comped your drink, you know."

"That was sweet," Kelly says. It's a little difficult to negotiate the small tables between the stage and the bar, especially in her silver sandals, but there you go, she can do it. "Hi, Jen!"

"Feeling better, are we?" Jen says, wiping glasses and smirking at her.

"Much."

"You're a pretty good singer," Jen says.

"You should hear her when she's sober," Joe says to Jen. "I think we're gonna head home now, she might need to lie down."

"No, I'm okay," Kelly tells him, fishing around in her purse for the emergency mini toothbrush she's got in there. Her mouth feels ooky. "I threw most of it up. I'm fine."

He blinks. "Well, we're going home anyway."

"She gonna be okay to go home with you?" Jen asks Joe, point-blank.

"Absolutely." Joe smiles. His dimples are really cute, Kelly muses. Really cute. Too bad he's not Tommy. "No, I like the idea of continuing to live. Tommy Conlon threatened to kill me if I was less than a gentleman."

"He did, did he?" Jen says, and laughs out loud. "Sounds like him. Well, if you're smart you'll be a gentleman."

"Not a problem. Hey, thanks for the drink. And we'll see you soon."

"You're welcome. But shorty, before you go gimme your cell phone for a sec. I want your number." Kelly hands it over, and Jen calls a number with it and then slides it closed again. "Okay, got it. By the way, you've got some messages."

"Oh good. Good night." Jen waves. On the way out, Kelly stops in the bathroom and brushes her teeth. The cool air outside feels really good. She and Joe sing along to the radio all the way back to her place, and she starts feeling more sober every minute, but she's still not quite there. When they pull up at her house, she is perfectly fine to get out on her own and make it up the steps to check on the boys; she only trips once, on a raised block of the sidewalk.

The boys are fine; they've been asleep for close to three hours now and Tamera's sleepy. Kelly pays her and hugs her goodnight – Tamera's such a sweet girl, and the boys just love her. On the porch, Joe standing one step down to say goodnight, she says, "Thank you for a very nice evening." She takes a deep breath, intending to say more about maybe they should just keep things on a friendly level because it seems that she's not really ready to date, and struggles to find words.

"Listen," Joe says. "I have a lot of fun with you. But I have this feeling that you are still... invested in that other guy, and maybe our timing kind of sucks. That you're not ready to date, maybe. Am I right?"

He's read her mind. "I was kind of thinking that sort of thing, yeah."

"I was having a conversation with Jen at the bar. And that guy... the one that dumped you? I met him tonight, didn't I?" Joe asks, and all Kelly can think is, _He knows. It must be all over my face_. His voice goes soft, and he's looking into her eyes. "It's Tommy. And he wants you back."

"Do you think so?" she blurts out, and then could have bitten her lips off. "_Crap_. I didn't tell anybody about it, I mean I told absolutely nobody. Not even Tess. Maybe especially not Tess. So how did you know?"

He smiles a little. "What do I do for a living, Fort Knox? I'm a detective. I _detect _stuff. For what it's worth, I don't think Tess knows. Or if she does, she has a champion poker face."

"Not Tess," Kelly says immediately.

"It was mostly him," Joe explains. "It was all over his face when he looked at you. He's kicking himself for letting you go. And boy, was he entertaining thoughts of chopping _me_ into little pieces, hoo boy. So when Jen said she knew him, and that's how she met you... well, I was sure then."

There's a sweet, twisting pain in Kelly's chest. _God, Tommy_. "We had a fight," Kelly says, feeling sick and achy again. "Tonight. On the deck. I said horrible things to him."

Joe puts his head on one side and looks sympathetic. "Bet it wasn't one-sided."

"No. No, he got in some good cracks too," Kelly says, and then she realizes. _He must be really hurting bad, to go on the offensive like that. _Some part of her is fiercely glad that she means at least that much to him. And another part? That one wants to comfort him. Yet another part of him still wants to slap him silly, and she is resolutely ignoring the part of her that wants to take him inside her and rock him all night.

"You still care," Joe says very softly. "So maybe it would be best if you and I went back to friend status, what do you think?"

"I think so. But Joe? I mean, that would be great, but only if you really mean friends. Because I can't take the drama."

"No drama," Joe says, and smiles. "Just friends. It's fine. Somewhere there is a girl for me, and I like you a lot but you're not her."

"I feel the same way. Let's stay in touch, maybe have lunch or something. Can we do karaoke again sometime? Because we never got to do that duet, and it would have been fun." So it's agreed: sometime they'll do karaoke again, not as a date. And she'll call him soon. She pulls his head down and kisses his lips softly, just checking... nope. No fire.

They say goodnight, and she goes inside, locking the doors behind her. She's still tipsier than she meant to be – whatever the heck Jen put in that drink is still doing a number on her. She goes upstairs, washes her face, and puts on a nightgown. She's going to be seriously hungover tomorrow and have to suffer through work, but she thinks it might have been worth it, just to find out what really happened with Tommy and Jen. She drinks a stadium cup full of water, forcing it down because she needs the hydration, takes two ibuprofen, and then drinks another cup of water for good measure. She'll be up at some point to pee, but better that than waking up feeling vile. With luck, she'll only feel awful instead.

Just as she's starting to turn out her bedside lamp, she remembers Jen telling her she had messages. So she has to go downstairs and get her phone. And there they are, three unread messages all from a familiar number, and a fourth message from a number she doesn't recognize. Kelly doesn't remember hearing her phone buzz, but maybe it had been too loud in the bar for her to hear it. She takes a deep breath and opens the oldest message, because she knows that number. It's Tommy's. Thank God.

The first message says: _Hey. U were mad, I was mad. Its ok, its gone, its done, its over. At least on my end. I forgot already. Call me k? I was gym w Frank, he was makin me talk to him, sorry I missed yr msg earlier._

Second one says: _Dont be mad. Just talk 2 me, k? I miss you crazy. I feel like such a shit sayin things like that to u. I didnt mean them either. I was being a dick. Im really sorry._

The third one, sent over an hour ago (probably when she was letting Jen yell at her), says: _God. Kelly. Call me I am dying over here. DONT SLEEP W HIM PLS. Pls._

The final message is this: _Hi shorty this is jen. Hope u live thru the nite ok. Sorry about the alcohol, I shold hv talked u into smth wimpy instd. PS. CHARGE UP YUR OLD PHONE DUMBASS. Call voice mail & then call HIM. Dont make me get out my machete. Nite. _

Kelly, seized by a miraculous hope, goes straight into the kitchen and gets out her stool so she can reach up to the top of the fridge, where she'd put an open container of dry rice and shoved that old cell phone in it, just in case. She knows the gentle heat of the refrigerator plus the desiccant properties of the rice might revive a waterlogged cell phone, but she'd already given up the phone for dead.

But maybe... just maybe...

She fits the battery back into the phone, slides on the backplate, and takes it upstairs with her to plug it into its charger. Maybe dead things do come back to life.

In the meantime, she's going to drunk-dial Tommy and hope for the best.

**A/N: Anybody who caught that bartender pun, put it in your review and I'll send you a virtual fifth of Captain Morgan's. ;) I'm sorry, but I couldn't resist. **

_**("Why is the rum always empty?")**_

**Scotch does not taste like ashtrays. It is, however, something most people have to become accustomed to. Now, me? I like gin. **

**And Jen, I like her too. Sensible girl. **


	46. Chapter 46: Three Things, Four

**Chapter 46: Three Things, Four **

**Long chapter with some lemon fluff here. And issues to be dealt with, too. We are gonna HUNT DOWN THEM DRAGONS AND SHOOT TO KILL, because dragons do not go away on their own. As always, I claim only my own characters. And the cell phone fluff is especially for _you_, dear Nik. :)**

Proverbs 30:18-19 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

**18 There are three things which are too wonderful for me,  
Four which I do not understand:  
19 The way of an eagle in the sky,  
The way of a serpent on a rock,  
The way of a ship in the middle of the sea,  
And the way of a man with a maid.**

Kelly is still halfway drunk when she has read those I'm-sorry text messages from Tommy, and even though she's worn out and sleepy from all the drama and the alcohol, she _has_ to call him. Has to hear his voice.

She has to dial twice because she fumbles the keys the first time, but she's gratified by how quickly he answers when she does get the number right. "Hey," he says, that gravel-and-velvet voice of his warm and soft, rumbling from her ear all the way down and setting little fires wherever it travels.

"Hey back," she says, smiling, thinking about the way his lips feel sliding all over her body and the way his voice reverberates in her chest when he talks to her like this. She stretches out on the bed, luxuriating in the sound she's missed so much.

"Your date's over? You're home?" He sounds hopeful. "_Please God_ tell me you didn't screw him."

"Of course I didn't," she says scornfully. "Don't be stupid, the only guy I want to screw is you."

"_Good,_" he says. "Anytime, baby."

"Well, not right now. You are in the _deep shit_ with me right now. You haven't groveled."

"So you're still mad at me?" he asks, hesitantly, and then she remembers why she called.

"_Yes._ I have yet to hear you tell me you're sorry for all the crap you put me through while you were gone. Everything. Running off, and not calling me, and... and_ everything_."

He's quiet, and then she hears him inhale. "Baby," he says, all tender, and her insides go liquid. "I _am_ sorry, I really am. I had my head completely up my ass and I didn't know... I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how we were gonna do this thing, you and me, and I was so..." He trails off.

"Why couldn't you just tell me you were scared?" she demands. "Because I was scared too. I still am. I'm scared I'm gonna run you off again. Dammit, don't you_ ever _do that to me again."

"Yes _ma'am_," he says, fervent, and then he ruins it by laughing.

"Oh shut up," she says, sitting up in the bed and getting mad again. "Do you have _any fucking idea_ how worried I was about you? You were sick when you left, and we didn't know where you were. Four weeks, a whole month, gone, and I didn't see you, and you called Brendan instead of me, and meanwhile you are living with some _girl_ – "

"Whoa," he says. "Whoa, whoa, one thing at a time, sweetheart, let me explain one before you go on to the next one."

"I don't want you to explain!" she says. _God,_ he's being stupid. "I need to vent first, _goddamn_ it, and _then_ you can be all logical. I need you to hear how it felt, because sometimes I just feel something whether it's logical or not. And it fucking _sucked,_ okay? Being without you. I still feel horrible you dumped me _in a letter_, you bastard."

There's another tiny silence. "Um... I don't, I don't know what... Kelly, I don't know what to do here. Because I want to apologize, but I have to explain too."

"No, you don't!" she says, starting to cry again. "Oh, shit, I was going to be all calm, and now I can't, because you're just – "

"Wait a minute," he says. "Baby, are you drunk? Your voice is funny. And you hardly ever swear like that."

"Yes! Yes, I am. And it's Jen's fault, too. She mixed me this drink that was pretty much all alcohol, and then she yelled at me for being a bitch to you, and it_ was_ really shitty what I said about the Corps so I said she was right – "

"Kelly," he says, over her yammering. "Kelly. Kelly. Kelly, listen to me. Kelly. Baby, please." And finally that penetrates her wacked-out intoxicated brain and she shuts up. "Can I, can I just – can I come over there? Because this is too confusing. And you're drunk. And I really, really need to just talk to you."

"No! You're not gonna just talk to me. You'll start _out_ talking to me, and then I'll get emotional and fall into your eyes and we'll wind up getting naked and fucking each other into the bed – "

"_Jesus Christ,_" Tommy says, breathless.

" – and you'll make me come six times, I'll be insane with sex and I won't even care that you were living with a stripper – "

"I am _definitely_ coming over there now."

"_Oh no you're not_. It'll take too long for us to hash this out tonight. I have to get up in the morning and go to work. And I'm still shitfaced drunk."

"Call in sick tomorrow," he says, and his voice is muffled, like there's something between his mouth and the phone. "I'm getting dressed right now. Be there in twenty. Don't_ you_ get dressed."

And then he's just gone. "Aw, just hell," Kelly says, looking down and seeing the 'call ended' message on her phone. She flops backward on the bed, because it's suddenly just too much damn work to sit up. Also because she's thinking thoughts of being on her back and having Tommy between her thighs, oh my _God_, that would be _so good _right now.

She turns her head to look at her old cell phone, plugged in to charge and sitting there on her bedside table. Miracle of miracles, the screen has lit up, and she snatches it, leaving it plugged in, and dials voice mail straightaway to listen to whatever got left on that number after she dropped it in the tub. "You have eight unheard messages," the robovoice says, and she pushes 1 to listen. Tess. Then Tommy, saying, "Call me" in an uncertain voice. Then Tommy again, his voice full of agonized longing, giving her the apology she's been waiting for. "Kelly? Kelly, please call me. Please. I miss you so much, so much... I can't stand it. Baby, I love you, and it just killed me seeing you today and knowing I hurt you like that, please forgive me, please. _Please_."

It hits her hard, hearing him so earnest like that, and the tears just jump into her eyes. He hadn't lied to her. He had missed her, he'd begged her to forgive him... she pushes the key that will let her listen to it again, and while she's listening the tears slide down her cheeks. Her _stupid_ phone. She's needed that message all along. She listens one more time, saves the message, and shuts the phone. _Oh, Tommy, I love you._

She can't wait for him to get here. She'll get up and turn on the porch light in a minute. In just a minute...

Her cell phone – the new one – rings. She has one moment of complete panic, one cell phone in each hand, and then she finds the ringing one and answers, too confused to notice who's calling.

"Baby," Tommy says. "Open your window, okay?"

"What?" She turns her head and sees him at the window. "How the hell did you get up here?

"Porch light's off and the door's locked, but your lamp's on. Figured you fell asleep," he says, and smiles at her through the window. "So I climbed up. Easy."

"That's completely terrifying. That somebody could climb up to my window and break it and get in." She goes to the window and fiddles with the lock. "_God._ Sneaking in my second-story window, shades of Twilight. You start sparkling in sunlight, dude, and we are _history_."

"_What the hell _is twi_– _baby, hang up. You can't do that one-handed. Not drunk, anyway."

"You're laughing at me," she says petulantly into the phone. What good is that gorgeous apology if he's going to make fun of her?

"No, I'm not. _Hang up and open the window_." It's his sergeant-giving-orders voice again, so she closes the phone and tosses it onto the bed before she tries the lock again. This time it gives, so she can open the window and take the screen out. He squeezes in, his shoulders barely fitting through the small space. "Well, that was a pain in the ass. I wouldn't worry that much about people getting in this way."

"A skinny burglar could have done it easy," she says. She's dizzy all of a sudden, and it's _him_, there in her room all full of swagger and sex and grin, and she has to sit down on the bed.

"Doubt it," he says, and walks over close to her. Takes her head in both of his hands and tilts her head up for a kiss, a sweet one that lasts a long time, and then several in a row. "Do you have any idea," he says between kisses, "how thin that nightgown is?"

She shakes her head, dazed. "I love you."

"I can see everything right through it. And I love you too. Why don't we make up first and talk later? Like tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow I have to go to work," she reminds him.

"That's _tomorrow_," he says, and kisses her again, this time in a way that makes her think he's right, they should make up first. "Right now I'm here and I'm sorry and I love you, and if I don't get to make love to you soon I'm just gonna fuckin' _die_, okay?"

"Wouldn't want you to die," she says, breathless, and then she pulls him onto the bed with her and it starts all over again, the ecstasy. Clothes gone, and kissing, naked kissing, and hands and tongues and hips pressed together, all swirled together in this kaleidoscopic pattern of pleasure, and there's so much sweet pain in her chest. But he feels so good between her thighs, so strong under her hands, and she can't help keening out her first climax into his shoulder with her calves twisted around his. After that it gets increasingly frantic and fast-paced, the goal to be as close as humanly possible. She's trying to be quiet, they both are, and yet she can hear their hissing breaths as if she isn't the one with her hands in his hair and her knees pulled back to her shoulders, whispering _yes yes oh god Tommy please yes,_ and when she comes again it's like she's been hit by lightning, limbs going stiff and frozen while her center pulses with electricity. It's only then that she melts into sleepy bonelessness, arms around his neck while he clutches her hips and pulls her closer, rocking her hard and fast until he puts his head into her shoulder and groans her name, arching up into her as far as he can.

He rolls over to the side and strokes her hair while his breathing comes back to normal. "We made up now? All but the details?"

"Nope. I still have some yelling to do." He rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth are curling up. "But I guess you could say that's details. I already forgive you, okay? Deal is, you still have to listen to the yelling. I have to get it out."

He sighs. "Well, you can't be all that much worse than my drill sergeant, Doherty, so I guess we're okay. Yell all you want, I'll still be here."

"Thank God," she says, and falls asleep right away.

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 *

Friday morning Tommy's awake at 5:30 am, as usual. What's not as usual is that he's naked in Kelly's bed. Not that he minds. He could, in fact, very happily get used to it.

He's still embarrassed that he'd said such nasty things to Kelly after dinner yesterday evening, and he has a feeling he's still in for a rough patch despite last night's making up. Even so, just the fact that she's talking to him now (well, and other stuff too) makes him feel better about life in general.

Especially since he's got a hell of a busy day ahead. Frank's got him doing another endorsement thing, this time with the protein shake stuff that Frank likes best, so he's got to be at the gym for them to make him look pretty (which will involve, at the minimum, people messing with his hair and putting stuff on his face, and then spraying water on his shirt to make him look sweaty, but in a clean, fake-sweaty sort of way) and then deal with a damn camera in his face for most of the morning. Ugh. Even worse, this time it's a video camera. Frank swears that if the video shoot gets too annoying, they'll back off and do still photos only. Tommy knows better, but oh well. The money's pretty good, and the protein shake mix is too so he won't be lying about anything.

And then he's got an appointment in the late afternoon downtown with a dude named Kevin Hall, who's ex-Army and a licensed professional counselor. Not a doctor, but the guy's been through college and training and stuff, and he'd served in Iraq in the Gulf War in the '90s driving a tank, so maybe he knows his shit. Tommy hopes so, anyway. Funny how his attitude's changed from _Everybody leave me the fuck alone_ to _Okay, maybe talking to the right person might help_. To be honest, Kelly's helped with that.

So has Brendan. And Frank. And Tess, and Jen, and even grouchy old Lou Pallotta and Rosa the waitress. And, to be perfectly honest, so has Pop. Which Tommy would never have expected.

He sighs. It's early, but it's time for him to run. He doesn't want to leave right now, not when Kelly's all warm and bare and curvy in his arms, when she still needs so much from him that he hasn't given her yet, but he figures he doesn't have that much of a choice. She needs to sleep off her drunk (and that was funny as hell, actually, her being all uninhibited) or she'll feel terrible. He's had enough hangovers to know that much.

Life without hangovers is seriously better, if you ask Tommy. He sighs again, feeling optimistic for once, and kisses her head before he gets out of bed. She stirs a little, and then goes back to sleep, and he smiles while he's getting dressed. He needs his shirt at the moment, so he can't leave it like a message the way he did once before, but he wants her to know he has to go, so he goes around the room squinting in the dawn light, looking for something to write on. Nothing. He settles for kissing her again, and planning to text her later, and creeps downstairs to go out, locking the door behind him.

He takes the bike back to Brendan's and runs his usual loop, waving at the few people who are out at this time of the morning, and then finds himself smiling as he ducks into Brendan's garage and then into the house for his shower. Tess is in the kitchen, drinking tea and looking like she doesn't feel well. "You okay?" he asks her.

She nods. "Mostly. Just have a headache." She eyes him up and down speculatively. "Did you go out last night? Your door was open when I came down."

"Um..." he says, stalling for time because he's not sure Kelly wants this piece of intel to become public yet.

"Well, you don't have to tell me," Tess hastens to add. "It's just... you know. Brendan still gets jumpy, scared that you'll take off again."

"I'm not gonna do that anymore," he tells her. "If I leave, it will be for a good reason this time, and I won't be runnin'. Like when it's time for me to have my own place."

"Oh, you don't have to leave," Tess says, her pretty forehead creasing up.

"I know. And that's really great of you. But I never wanted to be the bachelor uncle living in a room in his brother's house, so I think I might move into my own apartment before I'm, like, sixty." Tess blinks at him, missing the joke, so he tries again. "Maybe by the time I'm fifty-five."

This time she smiles. "Hey, how are your shoulders? Healing up okay?"

Tess had been the one to clean and bandage the fingernail marks in his shoulders after his last fight. He hadn't been able to reach them, and had asked her in private, but of course Brendan had had to barge in and start fussing about the way that fight was run, how that should never have been allowed, that guy was juicing and who knew what kind of disease he had under his fingernails, yada yada, and it had been Tess who had said to Brendan, "Look, babe, quit makin' a fuss. Those are girl fingernails, okay? _Post-fight_ girl fingernails." He hadn't explained that to Tess – she'd just known. Which probably indicates something about their sex life that he doesn't want to look too hard at.

And Brendan had gone bright pink, standing there with his mouth open like a goldfish. Tommy, despite his utter misery at having screwed up with Kelly once again, had actually laughed at his expression.

So now Tommy can't help thinking about Kelly when Tess mentions those fingernail wounds (shallow, and with the antibiotic salve they'd already started healing up good), and because of _that _he can't help smiling. "They're fine."

"Aha," Tess says. "Slipping out to see your girl, huh? I'd like to meet her sometime."

"Don't ask me about her right now, Tess," he tells her, gently. "Maybe soon, okay?"

"Okay. You want eggs?"

"When do I ever not want eggs?" he asks her reasonably. "Thanks." He heads for the shower.

His morning turns out to be exactly as sucky as he'd expected it to be, what with the videocams and the makeup people, but it's interesting that the photographer said he was a natural at playing the light, and it makes him hate the still shots less. And the check ought to be pretty good, too: five thou for endorsement, print ads, TV spots, the whole bit. He hopes he won't have to look at himself on a big screen anytime soon.

At lunchtime Frank corners him and reminds him about his therapy session, _yeah yeah Frank I'll be there_, and then that there's a UFC fight tonight that he and Marco ought to watch together, here at the gym on the big screen, because one of the middleweights involved is probably going to make the Sparta III roster.

_Shit, there goes spending the evening with Kelly_. His face must fall, because Frank reminds him that watching video is part of training, it's not optional. He nods, resigned.

Frank says, "So did you call her last night?"

He can't keep the grin away, it's a thief stealing his poker face, and Frank says, "Oho, so things are better?"

"Things are good," he says. "But keep it to yourself, okay? I'm still not sure a meteor won't land on me and wipe out all the good stuff."

Frank blinks. "Okay. Go eat. And forget about meteors."

The afternoon is normal workout stuff, for which he's really grateful, and he spends a good fifteen minutes in the backyard letting Emily show him her karate, no Rosie around this time since he missed his Em-time last night. She's such a sweetheart, Emily, more reserved than her baby sister and wiser to the ways that people can get banged up by life. He's not sure whether that's because she's older, or because it's just the way she is. Sometimes, though, she looks like an odd and beautiful combination of Tess and Mom, and he loves her for that as well as for everything else.

By 4:30 he has eaten an early dinner, showered and dressed, and he's ready for Brendan to take him to the counseling center, and he is jumpy as hell. He'd have liked to have heard from Kelly today, but the best he could do was to text her at lunch that he loves her, he'd had a great night and he hopes she feels okay, and he wants to see her tonight after he's done at the gym. And he loves her.

It doesn't feel stupid to say it twice. It makes him smile. He wants to tell Brendan about it, but when she's ready.

Kevin Hall is in his mid-forties, taller than Tommy, still fit, and has got the sort of grim smile he's often seen on older enlisted guys. Good handshake, and right from the start Tommy feels at home with him. No bullshit with this guy. Hall goes over the ground rules of the counseling sessions, and then they're right into it, big flyover view of Tommy's life and his history and the shit he's been dealing with. He's got time to go into the bombing and its aftermath, and they talk about it. Close to the end of the hour, Hall checks his watch and says, "You know, my next weekly session client canceled due to illness so I've got a free hour. You wanna keep goin'?" _Hell_, yes, Tommy wants to keep going now that he's got started. "Can't do it again probably, but just this once," Hall explains. Tommy nods, texts Brendan the change of plan, and keeps talking. They get into the court-martial, add then Leavenworth and the DD, and it's a little after 7pm when they knock off.

Brendan's waiting outside for him in the black Camry when he's done, Dinner Part II on the seat (grilled chicken, black beans, salsa, lettuce in a low-carb wrap). "So," Brendan says, mock-casual, as he's pulling onto the street, "how'd it go? You get through some stuff?"

Tommy gives him the stink eye. "Listen. _I'm_ doing this, okay? I gotta deal with my shit, but it don't mean I gotta tell you the details."

"No, no, no," Brendan hastens to say. "No problem, you don't have to tell me, I just wanted to know if you got on okay with the guy. I'm not gonna bug ya about it."

"Yeah. I like him. Good talk. And hey, I got an errand to do before you drop me at the gym, okay? I got some changes to make. If you got time and you don't mind."

Brendan looks startled, but he pulls in where Tommy directs him to, and waits in the car while Tommy attends to business. And his face, when Tommy comes out, is worth at _least _half a million bucks. Brendan keeps shaking his head, all the way to Soul of a Lion, where he drops Tommy off and hugs Frank before heading home to Tess, the lucky married man.

After the fight and the strategy rehash of Ramon Cabreras' KO of his opponent, after Frank's dropped him off at Brendan's and he's said goodnight and gone to his room, he calls Kelly to check in and see if he can come over. She doesn't answer at first and the call flips through to voice mail. It's not even eleven pm and she's not usually in bed by now, so she must be on another call she doesn't want to interrupt, he's thinking, but he calls back so he can leave her that message and this time she answers, clearly so sleep-addled that she's not quite sure what's going on.

"You okay?"

"What?" she says. "Oh. Tommy. Baby, I'm sorry, I'm just so out of it. I feel awful. Let me wake up some and I'll go unlock the door."

"No, it's okay," he says. He's disappointed, but he _had _kept her up late last night. "Tomorrow?" He's got three or four serious things to talk to her about, and he needs her awake to do it.

"Yeah, tomorrow." She yawns.

"Go back to sleep, baby. I love you."

"Love you too," she whispers, but he'd swear she's asleep again as soon as she says it.

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 *

Saturday morning, he's dying for Sparta III to come so he can get _that _over with. Three weeks left, and he can't wait. As he's cooling down after his morning run he goes by the bakery and picks up chocolate muffins for the boys and a bear claw for her. He's sitting on the top step of her porch with his back against one of the porch columns thinking about his walk-out music when she opens the door to get the paper.

Hearing the door, he turns around. It's only six-forty, but she's dressed: pink t-shirt, gray athletic shorts. Scuffed pink polish on her bare toes, hair messy and loose on her shoulders. Kelly in the morning, beautiful, and if he can manage to keep his shit together with the counseling he could be seeing her like this every day. _Soon_, he tells himself. "Hi," she says, picking up the newspaper in the hand not holding her coffee.

"Hi." He smiles at her.

"Finish running?" she asks, and comes out onto the porch after closing the door behind her.

"Yup."

"Want some coffee?"

"Not right now, thanks." He's got to get this out first. He waits a minute, trying to think how to start, and then she comes over and sits down a few feet from him on the top step, back against the other column. "God, I wanna kiss you right now, but I have to get this out first, okay?" She nods. Puts the paper down. Sips her coffee. Looks at him expectantly. "I just... God. This is hard for me."

She smiles her good smile that feels like a hug, and the corners of her eyes crease up with it. "I know. So what's up?"

"Okay. So you were right. You and Frank and Brendan and everybody else in the free world were right, I do need to be seeing a counselor. Just... look, I need people to not keep damn _checking on me_, okay? Like I'm the Thanksgiving turkey in the oven. 'Is it done yet? How's it goin'? Poke the skin and see if it's crispy.'"

She nods, looking down thoughtfully. "Fair enough. No nosy questions." Then she looks back up, catching his eyes. "You know that people only ask because they care about you, right? It's not just nosiness. But if I forget, then you just remind me you're not a turkey. Sound okay?"

"Well. Fine." He picks up the bakery bag and hands it to her. "For you and the boys."

"Oh, you shouldn't have," she says, flirty, and then she smiles very warmly. "Peace offering?"

"Yes, I'm bribing you into a good mood with pastry," he says, "don't have me arrested," and because she doesn't have any makeup on he can see the freckles on her nose, and because it just feels good that he gets to see her not-mad morning face, he can't help smiling back.

"Smells great." She pauses for a moment. "I probably shouldn't eat it, though. I should probably go low-carb and lose that ten pounds."

"Don't you dare," he shoots back. "Your ass is perfect. Leave it alone."

Her eyebrows go up, and then she laughs. "Okay. Fine. Give me an excuse to eat bear claws once a week, and I'll take it."

"Well, it_ is_ perfect." So's the rest of her. But now he can't think of how to get to the second thing he wants to tell her, and then she's leaning sideways to get a better look at him and giving him this incredulous I-can't-believe-it face.

"_Why _are you wearing a watch cap? It's frickin' eighty degrees out here!"

_Second thing_. And he hasn't even had to bring it up; she's asked. "Didn't want to get my head sunburned," he says, and then slides off the cap, revealing the modified high-and-tight he'd asked the barber for yesterday evening, right after his therapist appointment.

And she reacts exactly the way he'd hoped – she gasps in, and slowly exhales through her words, sighing them out. "Oh my God, look at _you._" She's blinking away tears and smiling around them. "_Look_ at you."

"It just felt right." He shrugs. When he'd come back to the gym Friday evening to watch an MMA fight on TV with Marco and some of the guys, Frank had taken one horrified look at him, shaken his head, and said, resigned, "Well, it's your hair. Whatever." Brendan and Tess had said nothing more than, "Oh, you got your hair cut," and he expects that his nieces will just want to touch the fuzz on the sides and giggle at the tickling sensation.

But Kelly sees. That it's not just a haircut, or an image – it's an identity. That he's reclaiming part of himself again. And maybe he won't keep the haircut (which, if he's truthful, makes his head look tiny on top of his body since his traps have gotten ridiculously big again), but maybe he will. Thing is, now he can wear his hair this way without feeling sick and frightened and abandoned. He can wear his hair this way as a tribute to his platoon. And fuck anybody who says he abandoned his Marines. He didn't abandon them; he'd closed every staring eye and arranged every body in the most appropriate way possible, through his own love and grief and guilt and unbearable pain.

Nobody can take that away from him.

"You look like a guy who's figuring out who you are," she says softly.

"I'm gettin' there," he says. "Starting to understand what parts of the past to keep, and what parts I'm better off ditching. This," he runs his fingers over the short hair, "this is mine. I'm the one who lived. I can't let that be for nothin'. It's for them, too. And... maybe, just a little... maybe for Pop, too. He was a scared kid in uniform, once."

She takes a deep shaky breath. "God, Conlon, you just kill me," she says, and wipes her eyes. "You bribe me with pastry and then you make me cry. Damn you, I just love you so much."

"Me too." There's a silence when they just look at each other, look into each other, and that... thing stretches out between them again, that taut wire that connects their hearts, so whatever she's feeling vibrates something inside his chest too. He wants, desperately badly, to hold her and kiss her and make love to her until they're both exhausted, an ache that doesn't just sit in the groin but spreads out all over his body, fingers and collarbones and back of the throat, everywhere. Finally she speaks again. "So what else? There's something else you want to ask me."

"Yeah. Will you come to the tournament? Saturday and Sunday. Assuming I make it to Sunday. I'm asking officially." _Third one down_._ Please._

But she's shaking her head. "I don't know if I can. It's not just finding someone to keep the boys, that's not the problem. Office is closed until the day after Labor Day, so that's okay too. It's – " And she stops and sighs, lips pressed together.

"Brendan and Tess are coming. Pop's coming." That's it. That's his fan club. Most of the guys at the gym are pretty great, but truth be told, they're Marco's buddies more than they are his. It's okay, it doesn't bother him that much. They're not, you know, important. Not like family. Not like Kelly. "I would... really be happy if you did."

She drinks some more coffee. Shuffles her feet on the step. Bites her upper lip. "Thing is. Well. Thing is, I'm a little worried about it. The crowd, the noise, the violence. Those are hard for me, they can be triggers for my flashbacks. I'm getting better at averting them, but I can't always do it. And then too, it's hard for me to think about you getting hurt. I hate that."

"Don't worry about me. I'll be fine," he says. It's bending the truth: he only _might _be fine. He'd sustained incredibly little damage up until fighting Brendan, last time. He still remembers exactly how his brother had hurt him – how he'd _made _his brother hurt him: black eye, split lip, countless bruises on face and jaw and arms and back and thighs. He'd broken a toe, though that hadn't been specifically Brendan's fault. And the torn shoulder muscle from the dislocation, that too of course. He'd made Brendan hurt him, trying to push through the deadness and the lies between them, and Brendan had let go of his control and let his feelings come through. That's what Tommy's choosing to remember about it now, the way that hitting each other had knocked all the bullshit out of the way and let them really see each other in a true light.

Will Tommy get hurt this time? Probably – it's hard to say. But if you go in thinking about how you're going to get hurt and what pain you're in for, you'll lose. He still hates to lose worse than he hates physical pain.

"I'm not exactly," she stops and swallows, not looking at him, "not exactly worried about you. It gets bad, they'll stop the fight and get you medical attention."

There's a little pause, and then he says, "You mean you really are worried." He reaches a hand out to her, and she sets down her coffee cup and takes it in both of hers. "About you having a flashback._ And _about me."

She falls silent, still looking at him with a face that's part apology, part fear, and while they're staring at each other he falls so deeply into her eyes that he also remembers what it's like to be inside her, how extra-naked it feels, like he's grown another set of nerve endings. Like his beating heart is exposed to hers, like he belongs to her.

The shared gaze keeps gathering their feelings so that they're almost visible in the air, and her lips part soundlessly so he knows she's getting swept away too, the way she does when they're both being really open. He wants so much to just _fuck her_, but of course fucking her would just be the start of things, they would do it and do it until their hearts sort of fused and became one big lump of too much _everything_, and he would die for her, let alone punch the shit out anyone who was trying to hurt her.

"Don't," she says, trying to pull her hands away but he won't let her, he takes both of them and holds them up to his mouth to kiss them. "_Don't_," she says again, almost crying, and takes a shaky breath. "Don't kiss me, don't look at me like that, _please_, Tommy, I can't, the boys will be up soon. I have to be_ responsible_."

"Kelly," he says, and has to stop because the next thing he does will have to be to take her in his arms, and soon after that they'll have to find a private place, because there is really no way to stop it happening again, no way at all.

No way at all. "Where can we go?" he whispers, and kisses her palm, letting her fingers curl around his face because he knows what it's doing to her, the same thing it's doing to him, that unbearable ache to_ be part of_, which is big a part of what sex feels like with her. He pulls her wrist up and licks across her tattoo, which is healed enough to not be raw but not healed enough to not be sensitive, and her little gasp tells him how much it affects her. "I love you."

"We can't," she says, but she sounds like she's wavering.

"Where?" he asks again, lips moving against the tender skin of her inner wrist, and she makes one of her soft little moans. God, he's going to just _die_ if he doesn't get to sink into her, and soon.

She lets out an explosive shaky breath, and he can practically see her capitulate. "Downstairs," she whispers, and as they stand up he can see how shaky her legs are, how tight her nipples show even through shirt and bra. They leave the bag of pastries in the kitchen and go down into the basement holding hands, latching the door behind them and trying not to make noise on the creaky wooden steps. The light's off but enough early sun leaks through the half-windows at ground level that he can see what's down here: washer, dryer, furnace, hot-water heater. Bare concrete floor. Clothesline from one side of the room to the other, wire hangers at one end. That's it. It will have to be the dryer, and while that's not exactly ideal, it is at the same time _sexy as hell_ that they can't wait.

"Kelly," he says again, pulling her to him and kissing her, backing her up against the dryer. Her hands are low on his back, and he breaks the kiss to pull off her top, and then more kissing, delicious and hot, and her hands slide into his shorts. He kicks off his shoes, kisses down the side of her neck and her collarbone to the tops of her breasts, and she's making those quiet moans. "Shhhhh." He goes back to kissing her lips, and she starts to pull his shorts down, so he lets her, lets them fall to the floor as he strips her shorts and panties off. She yanks at the tight compression shorts he wears for running, he pulls them down, and lifts her up to sit on the dryer. She lets out a little shriek into his mouth, probably because it's a cold surface under her bare skin, but he doesn't let her complain, just pulls her legs over his shoulders and leans in to taste her.

All these times he's had his mouth on her and yet he can't get enough. But maybe he can't ever do too much of it, judging by the way she starts making these choking groans, biting into her own hand to stifle the sound. She's already slick there, wet and salty-sweet, but she gets suddenly wetter, her thighs tensing and that sensitive bud swelling firmer under his tongue, and by the time he gets two fingers inside her she's already coming, shuddering there on the dryer, head tipped completely back and all of her in spasm. Watching her come always makes him rock-hard and desperate, and he tries to get a little control.

As her breathing starts to slow a little and she leans up to be kissed, he opens the front hook on her bra and caresses her nipples with one hand, pulling her closer to the edge of the dryer with the other so he can step between her legs, right up against all that wet heat of her. It's hard to not make noise of his own, but she's making plenty, like always, despite her obvious attempts to be quiet, and an interruption would likely kill him dead from loss of blood in his brain at this point, so he stifles the impulse. She leans back on her elbows, wrapping her calves around his thighs so that if he moves more than a few inches either way he won't have anywhere to go except inside her. "Not yet," he says, and bends to kiss her breasts one after the other, sucking each nipple into his mouth and flicking his tongue across it. "Hush."

"Please," she pleads under her breath, shooting his veins with a jolt of desire so that he moves involuntarily against her, just enough to make them both gasp.

"Not yet," he repeats against her neck, smelling her yesterday's perfume and the warm musk of her skin, feeling her nipples pebbled up against his chest, and moves just the tiniest bit against her again, just maybe half an inch forward and back. And that's so damn good that he keeps doing it, teasing her until she shudders for the second time, gasping _oh god oh god oh god yes_. She tightens the pressure of her legs on his, pulling him closer, then reaches one arm up around his back and sits up, and the change in angle causes him to slip just a little inside her, and then he's committed. Arms around each other holding tight, deep deep kisses, deep strokes as long and slow as he can manage. She's making tiny strangled whimpers with each one, and what he wants more than anything now is his name on her lips when she comes again. "Say my name," he growls into her ear, unsurprised at the animal way his voice sounds. "Say it, don't stop until you come, _say it_."

And she does, repeating his name in a broken throaty whisper and moving against him in increasingly frantic writhing motions until he can't help moving faster, and her head falls back once more and her internal walls clench and release around him, and then, finally, the blinding wave of his own orgasm takes him under with a relief so profound he finds his lashes wet when he's able to open them.

He's still holding her tight when she puts both hands on his chest and pushes. "Let go." As always, after sex he's slow to make his way up into the verbally-able part of his brain, and her request really doesn't make sense. They've just spent the last, what – ten minutes? fifteen? – wrapped up around each other, body to body and heart to heart, and now she wants him to let go? Trying to understand, he just holds tighter.

She shoves again. "Tommy, I mean it. I can't breathe right, let me go."

"No." He says it back so fast that he surprises himself, but he doesn't back down, not even when she starts trying to get away. She doesn't stand much chance of that and they both know it, and it's starting to make her panicky.

"Dammit, Tommy! I'm serious, let go!" She pushes at him again.

He just wants to calm her down, that's all. "Just calm down, hold on, everything is okay," he tells her. "Calm down and I'll let you go." But then she gets her hand back to slap at his face, and his reflexes pick that up so that he grabs her wrist and holds it, keeping her from smacking him. "_Don't hit me_."

It's more than his dislike for being physically struck outside the cage – it's his knowledge that her hitting someone else is going to infuriate her and make her feel guilty later. She _hates_ fights, and she's going to kick herself if she hits anybody.

But she must not really be hearing him, because when she pulls her other hand back to strike at him it's such a sudden, familiar movement that he shifts instinctively into sparring mode, and blocks her blow with his forearm, so that her hand glances off his arm and then her own head, and since he's being defensive it takes him a few moments to realize what's happened.

She's stopped moving and is rigid with terror, her eyes huge and her pupils tiny, her breath coming in shocked pants. Sweat beading up on her forehead although it's cool in the basement. _Oh shit._

"Kelly?" He lets go of her wrist, chagrined to see the red marks of his fingers' pressure on it, and steps back. "You okay?" She doesn't answer, just sort of slides off the dryer and crouches there on the floor in a ball. "I'm sorry. I am so sorry. I just – I wanted you to calm down." _Fuck_. Talking to her isn't helping; she's still in a tight ball with all her muscles locked up, and suddenly he wants his own clothes back on, on the theory that if bad shit is going down he wants to be dressed. So he does that, and then brings her clothes to her, putting them down and touching her forearm to draw her attention to them. She looks up and there's no recognition in her eyes, no sign that she knows who he is at all. "Kelly?" Nothing. She's trembling.

_Flashback_, he thinks. _Fucking hell._

He doesn't know how often she's getting them now. The last one _he'd_ had was probably a couple of weeks ago, right after he'd gotten back to Brendan's and while Kelly hadn't been talking to him at all. Brendan had been watching some war movie in the other room, maybe "Apocalypse Now," maybe "Platoon," and the gunfire had gotten to him, pulled him in, so that he was suddenly in the middle of a firefight in one of those dusty little Iraqi villages full of people who hated them. He'd been curled in a ball on the bed for who knows how long, under the comforter, until he'd finally gotten warm and come back to himself. He kneels down on the cold concrete floor in front of her and touches her shoulders, looking into her face. "You are safe," he says. "You are _safe_. I'm not gonna hurt you. Nobody is gonna hurt you."

Still nothing, and he's not sure what to do at this point, when suddenly there's the rush and thunder of little boys' feet coming down the stairs from the top floor, and a shout of "Mom!" and her eyes come into focus like a snap of the fingers, like _that_.

"Tommy," she says, and blinks. "Crap, the boys are awake." He hands her her underwear, and they just look at each other a moment. She doesn't seem scared right now, but he feels sick for everything that's just happened. "Did I – blank out there for a minute?"

"Yeah. I think I scared you," he blurts out. "I'm sorry. Baby, I'm _so _sorry."

She hooks her bra, tugs on her t-shirt, reaches for her underwear. As she steps into it, sort of duckwise, still crouching, the sight of the wetness on her thighs once again just undoes him with a sort of tender possessiveness. _That's me_, he thinks, _that's mine_. She pulls her shorts on, stands up, and answers the repeated shouts of "Mom!" with "Hey, guys, I'm working on something in the basement and I'll be up in a little bit. Watch cartoons if you want." It's a trembly approximation of how her voice usually sounds, but it must work, because a faint _okay!_ comes floating back down to them from Jack.

He stands up and watches her: she's started to pace around and hold her head, and this doesn't look good. Coming out of a flashback, you need comfort and safety, and you need to get back into your body – she needs more coffee and maybe a blanket, or that beat-up Penn State hoodie she wears for chilly weather. "Can I get you something? Will you come up to the kitchen now?"

"No. Listen, Tommy..." She sighs. "Look. I think we should maybe... not see each other for awhile. I mean not like this."

_Shit. I really musta scared her. _ "I'm listening, but I still think you should come upstairs and talk to me up there, okay?"

"No. Shut up a minute, will you? I'm thinking how to say this." _Damn it. _How has he managed to fuck this up again? "I just think... okay, look. I think I shouldn't be alone with you so much. There's just – it's us, it's the two of us, we're connected. And when we're alone, sometimes you open up to me like you do to nobody else, and I can't resist that, and we wind up having sex, and it's just... It's too big. I can't think about anything else, and I can't get the old crap out of my head."

"I thought – " he starts to say, _I thought we made up. I thought we were together_. He swallows hard.

"Look," she says. "I love you. I love you just... crazy... but I have to work on my issues. And I am having the hardest time dealing with it when you're around, because all I want to do is make love with you and not think about things, not work on them. And they are just going to keep biting us in the ass if I don't work on them."

He doesn't know what to say, he just knows that it hurts like hell – but somewhere in his heart something just clicked into place, the way it does when the truth matters. The way it had done when he realized he loved her. And when he'd understood that the world is full of good people, and all he has to do is open himself up to them.

"You really want me to go?" he asks, his heart squeezed. "Are we breaking up?"

Her face contorts up like she's going to cry, and then she makes the effort to smooth it out. "I don't mean never see each other again, I mean take a break from this high-drama stuff with the insane sex. Just don't... don't go far, okay? I love you so much, I just need time. I just need... some time to work on me. And you just started working on your own stuff."

He rubs his chest where it's aching and gets a deep breath. She's right. He hates it, but she's right. "Will you let me know? When you're... when you feel like you're ready to see me?" She nods again.

It feels like it takes forever for him to climb the stairs to the main floor and let himself out, avoiding the dining room where, apparently, Martin is making muffin crumbs all over the table and Jack is ordering him to clean up the mess, as if a five-year-old is really capable of cleaning up his mess.

How can he fix this, other than fixing himself first? He remembers Frank had said something like this on Thursday, too, saying that once Tommy's dealt with his crap, maybe he won't need to worry about being like his father. No, she's right. He does have to deal with his shit first, while she deals with hers, before they can be together with any chance of success.

It's only when he's jogged back to Brendan and Tess's, retrieving his watch cap from the floor of the porch, that he realizes what's good: he hadn't taken off when things got bad. When she'd yelled at him last night for not staying in touch, when she'd said all that wacky psych crap about dealing with their issues before they deal with each other – it had hurt, yeah, but he'd stayed. He'd stayed until she'd made him go. _Still in the_ _cage fighting_, he thinks, _only now I'm fighting for __**us**__. And I can't use my fists this time. But I got the balls to do it, hell yeah I do, and it's gonna be so worth it. _

**A/N: Okay, edit just to make this clear: Kelly is not entirely in her right mind at the moment, okay? Mental health issues, okay? She's not being a bitch on purpose; she is messed up. We're gonna get her some help really soon. And as usual, Tommy's being harder on himself than he ought to be, but we'll let his therapist deal with THAT.  
**


	47. Chapter 47: Treehouse Confessional

**Ch 47: The Treehouse Confessional  
**

**A/N: Um. So. Apparently quite a few of you want to drop-kick Kelly into the Monongahela and have Tommy go back to Jen - even after I edited in the part about Kelly needing to deal with her mental health issues.**

**Well, okay. You get to choose what you want to read. Thing is, Kelly just sort of had this meltdown which you might not have been expecting after the voice mail message fluff and Teh Sexx – although the hints that she's got issues with this kind of thing go all the way back to Chapter 12 and are scattered through the fic. This is not a development out of the blue.**

**What I'm trying to say here is, THIS AIN'T HALLMARK. This isn't a Hollywood rom-drama where our lovers have one good quarrel and then make up cute. If that's what you thought this was, then I'm sorry. Mental health issues are Real Life Hell, and lots of people go through them all the time. They pop up out of nowhere, sometimes, and they confuse the heck out of the people experiencing them, and the people that love those people. They need to be dealt with if there's ever going to be any chance of success for these guys.**

**So here we go: there IS a reason for her flipout, and she's going to start working on her problems right away, and I SWEAR THERE WILL BE HAPPY PUPPIES AND FLUFF AND RAINBOWS by the end of this thing, I SWEAR IT WITH UNICORNS AND SPRINKLES ON TOP. **

**If you're wondering desperately, it'll start getting seriously marshmallow-fluffy in about eight chapters and continue that way until The End, in Chapter 61. Hope you can stick it out with me through the Epilogue, but if it's not your thing, I'm glad you stuck around this long. Thanks for reading.**

**My humongous thanks to Nik216, WinterIsComing01, and cupcakecarrie for helping me hash this thing out. **

Kelly has spent the entire morning shaky on her legs as she's cleaning the house. She feels _terrible_: she'd been so abrupt in announcing her snap decision not to see Tommy, and she's second-guessing herself every minute. He hadn't seemed terribly upset by it – more just confused. But still. Maybe she'd been too harsh, pushing away the possibility of more (fantastic) sex.

Right after lunch, she goes upstairs and puts in a call to the emergency number for Dr. Hostettler, requesting a phone consult or an office visit ASAP, because she's so mixed up by now that she really doesn't know what to do.

What she really wants, right now, is Tommy_ here_. Hanging out with her and the boys, having dinner, fitting into their little family the way he's always seemed to enjoy doing... and making love to her behind closed doors. Even this minute, hours later, she can still feel his hands on her, can still hear his voice all achy in her ear, telling her to say his name... say his name until she comes. If she's not careful she's going to spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about him until she's desperate, and then she'll call him and beg him to come over...

… and then they'll get so lost in the (fantastic) sex that she won't have any room in her brain for anything else.

GAH. She shakes her head and goes to clean the bathroom.

When her phone rings it's Dr. Hostettler herself, gauging how worried Kelly is and how badly she needs a session. And of course Kelly falls all over herself explaining everything that's happened since her last session on Wednesday, and the things she's said to Tommy this morning, all a mixed-up jumble of Jen and Joe and the nasty comments after dinner Thursday and the drunk dialing and the exquisite coming-home feeling of making love Thursday night, and the voice mail apology, and Tommy's therapy and his haircut and the dryer sex this morning – and her sudden, absolute certainty that the (fantastic) sex is only distracting her from working on her issues because of _this _and_ this _and _this_ happening.

She comes to an abrupt stop, and there's a little silence. Kelly can even hear the faint scratching noise of Dr. Hostettler's pen as she makes notes.

"Well," Dr. Hostettler says, "I'd rather not interrupt my family day today for a non-emergency session, especially if we can do a bit of discussion by phone. Unofficially, you might say – I won't bill you for this. But I think you've come to a real discovery here, and I would very much like to go deeper with this subject on Monday evening.

What real discovery? That (fantastic) sex with Tommy makes her crazy? Literally, _fucking insane_?

She doesn't even realize that she's said it until Dr. Hostettler laughs.

"No, Kelly, you're not insane. And I'd like to get into it in more detail, like the reasons behind this pattern of behavior, but for now – you just listed for me three separate occasions in which you had very satisfying and relational sex, followed by either a flashback or an extremely emotional outburst. Can you think of any other ones?"

Yes, as a matter of fact she can. Not on the same level, but still: way back, months ago, when she'd been having sexual dreams about him and come home to find him sitting sweaty and gorgeous on her back step, having mowed her grass, having done something _nice_ for her, and she'd screamed her head off at him.

"And what did he do?" Dr. Hostettler wants to know.

"He apologized for startling me." It still surprises her, how sweet he can be most of the time. _Nothin' sweeter than a sweet man_, her mother used to say, and then lean over and kiss Daddy on the cheek. She hasn't said it since Daddy died, and certainly she's never said it to Fred in Kelly's hearing.

"Do you think he might be willing to come to a session or two with you? I'm assuming that this is an ongoing relationship."

Kelly hopes so. She hopes that she hasn't chased him off _again_, by being freaked out _again_. "I'll ask him," she says.

"Well, just briefly," Dr. Hostettler says, "I know we've spent a lot of time talking about the things that your ex-husband would accuse you of, and I think that's been rumbling around in your brain for some time. And you've mentioned once or twice that your stepfather made frequent disapproving comments about your sister's sexuality. This would have been about the time you were entering puberty, and that may be significant in setting up feelings of shame or guilt in regards to your very normal enjoyment of sex."

Kelly can't even talk for a minute, she's so stunned. All she can get out is "Oh."

"So I think you may be right to hold off on having sex while you and I work through the issue. Though that really should be a mutual decision – I think you should _discuss _it with your partner. Can we go back to twice a week? Or is once weekly better for you?"

"Let's go twice a week," Kelly says. She wants to get through this soon.

After she gets off the phone with her therapist and pulls some chicken out of the freezer to thaw for dinner, after she checks on the boys playing some bastardized version of checkers in Jack's room, then she goes into her own room and closes the door. She pulls out her phone, takes a deep breath, and texts Tommy: _Hey. Got a minute?_

Almost immediately, a text pings back: _For you, lots._

She can't help smiling. Before she can finish her "call me" reply, he sends her another one: _If u r calling, wait 5 min. Goin outside to treehouse first for privacy._

She waits five minutes and then hits the "call" button on her phone.

"Hey," he says, and the sound of his voice makes tears pop up in her eyes, he just sounds so... warm. And so _hers_. "You okay? You were kinda... upset. This morning."

"Better now. I called my therapist."

"Oh?"

"And talked to her about this thing I do – you know, like we, um, have sex and then I get all wacked out."

"Yeah?"

"You noticed that?"

He's quiet a minute. "Um. Not really. I mean, I thought the fight was hard on you, when you had a flashback. And then you had legitimate reason to be pissed at me after my fight. This morning? That one I don't get."

"Dr. Hostettler thinks I have issues of feeling guilty when I enjoy sex."

"Huh." He's quiet again, and then he says, considering, "Well, I know Mike was a dick to you. And then you said once that your stepfather said rude things about your sister getting pregnant and he worried you would too. I think that would easily mess with a girl's head."

"She thinks I'm right to hold off on sex for awhile so she and I can work on things. Is that... look, I mean, I just _said it _this morning without thinking it out, and I didn't ask how you felt, and there are two of us here. So... no sex for a limited time, is that a dealbreaker for you?" She holds her breath.

"No. Well, I don't _like_ it. It's so fucking incredibly good, you and me..." His voice gets sweet and gravelly again, and she shudders while the rush of remembered sex zips through her veins. "But if you need to work on your shit, and it's holding you back because it's so intense between us and you get distracted – well, I'll live. I mean, I can wait."

"You sure?"

"Hellzyeah, I can wait. Really. My dick doesn't_ totally _run my life." There's a smile in his voice now, and she sags against her pillow in relief. "I know what it's like to put too much effort into stuff and not do the things you really should do. Like when I was overtraining because I was stressed and instead of going to therapy I was working constantly? And I had that liver problem because of it? I understand. I do. And baby, I'll still be here."

"Oh good."

"So you're calling me to tell me I won't see you for awhile? Like a month, or two months, or – "

"Oh, I didn't mean like _never _see you. I meant not seeing you, um, naked. I think it would be okay for us to talk. Okay to see each other with other people around. If that's okay."

"No, that's better." And now he sounds relieved, too. "I get it, we're just not fucking each other blind all hours of the day and night. As long as we get to do it again sometime in the future, I'm okay with it."

"You're _sure_?" she asks again.

"Are we together?" he asks. "You're not ditching me for Joe the cop, are you?"

"Good _God,_ no. I like him, but... he's not you. Yes, we are absolutely together."

"Well then. I guess that's that, and we're good." He's back to the smile in his voice.

"I love you," she finds herself saying, tears dripping down her nose and a stupid smile on her own face.

"Baby, I love you too," he says, _so_ sweet. "Oh hey – goin' to Jen's fight tonight. You wanna go? Brendan and I have to do a demonstration thing."

"No babysitter available," she tells him. Which is true; Tamera had made it clear on Thursday that she had plans on Saturday. But also, if he's going to demonstrate fighting stuff... bare-chested... in shorts... she's going to have a _bitch_ of a time not just grabbing him. Really, it's her own sex drive undermining her.

Which is, she supposes, the difficulty. How do you fight something like your thoughts, when the thoughts hurt you?

"Can I call you tonight when I get home?" he wants to know.

"Oh yeah."

"I liked what we were doin' before. You know, talking every night? I actually slept pretty good after I talked to you."

"I miss that too. Yeah." She does miss it.

It's agreed – he'll call her tonight, and she'll work hard on her issue, and the goal is to to be able to handle having (fantastic) sex with each other and not have her flip out. Soon soon soon, she promises herself.

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8

The Philly Girls Punchout – which, Brendan agrees with Frank, is a perfectly horrible name – is due to start at 8pm on the second Saturday of August, in the Wheel City Ford dealership parking lot, in a tent. It's not exactly an ideal venue. But then, fights between females don't normally draw a lot of paying attendees.

Brendan has agreed to make an appearance, as a sort of Hometown MMA Boy Makes Good And You Can Too booster to ticket sales. He's also agreed to do a demonstration/teaching exercise for the eight women involved in the tournament and their trainers, and Frank has finally agreed that Tommy can demo with him since it's private.

Tess doesn't like it one bit, not one bit. Every time it's come up in conversation she's gotten pinch-lipped and left the room, and that's happened several times this week. By Saturday morning she's wound to the eyeballs, and her apparent unwillingness to tell her husband exactly why she's so pissed off is really screwing with his peace of mind.

He tackles her about it anyway, delegating Tommy to go start some Tennis Ball Catch with his nieces in the back yard and finding her upstairs where she's going through Emily's school clothes to see what else the kid might need before school starts. "Hey," he says to her. "Everything goin' okay?"

She looks at him sideways, wary, and he reflects that since she always seems to know what's going on with him anyway, he ought not to be surprised by that. "Fine," she says, carefully, folding a stack of size-8 tee shirts. "Emily's outgrowing her jeans, though."

"Good thing, too. She's eight, that's her job." As he'd intended, Tess smiles briefly. "Honey... you seem... upset about this women MMA tournament this evening. I'm not sure why – will you tell me?"

She opens her mouth to explain, and then shuts it. Sighs, and then starts picking through Emily's socks for the ones with holes. When she finally says something she sounds reluctant. "I'm just nervous about you getting back in a ring with Tommy."

Brendan's eyebrows go up. "It's a demonstration, babe. That means, I talk about some particular move, and then he and I show people how to do it, in slo-mo so they can see it easily. And then we might spar a little after that, but c'mon, it's not like we don't do that every Saturday."

"I know," Tess says, and her tone of voice says that she's not happy about_ that_, either.

"And have either one of us come home hurt?" Brendan presses.

She exhales, still sorting socks, and shakes her head.

"You're just nervous anyway? You know, he's just been so much better lately. He smiles. He's sweet with the kids. He's sweet with_ you_. He's more like the kid he was... like when Pop wasn't home, I mean. He'd do anything for you."

"He's always sweet with the kids," Tess says. "And you're right, I think he would do anything for us. I'm just..."

"Being a worrywart," Brendan finishes for her. She smiles a little ruefully, and then nods. "Come here." He pulls her close and she wraps her arms around his waist. "Look, I promise you he won't hurt me today. Okay? You got that?"

She nods against his shoulder. "I think it's just that I happened to catch a little clip of your fight on ESPN last weekend, and I'd almost forgotten what he was like then. Brutal. Vicious. I mean, he was seriously trying to take your head off, babe."

Brendan sighs. He might be the person who best understands Tommy in the world, and he also knows that he'd had just as much rage and bitterness as Tommy had back then. He'd just been better at channeling it. "I'll point out that I was trying to take his head off too, and leave it at that. Last time, Tess – last time we were playing out all kinds of emotions in the cage. It won't be like that now."

She tilts her head back and forth the way she does when she's torn. "I know he's... in a better place emotionally now. But he's still got every bit of skill that he ever had, and to hear Frank talk he's even faster. I'm just nervous."

"You haven't actually seen him on Saturday afternoons for sparring. I have. He's wicked fast on his feet, he punches like a jackhammer, he's got holds I can't even figure out, and he's more strategic than he's ever been. He is freakin' scary. But Tess? He hasn't hurt me yet, and he isn't going to hurt me today." He looks at her head on. "What were you doin' watchin' MMA commentary on ESPN, hmmm?"

He's got her. Her cheeks flush pink. "Well, I'm just... wondering. You know. With Tommy being in and everybody talking about him, I just wanted to see what people were saying. And now JJ Riley has come back in as a sponsor. You heard about that, right?"

"Yeah. Extra two mil for the champ. Smart of him, it's good advertising and Frank says ticket sales were steady before, but after that announcement they sold out in four hours. Oh, I got tickets, by the way."

"You bought them?"

"Well, I'm supposed to, you know, bring the belt and display it, do a few interviews and stuff. No, I didn't pay for 'em. Six ringside VIP tickets. That's you, me, the girls if you think – "

"No," Tess cuts him off. "Not yet. And I don't want them watching it on TV either."

"I figured you'd say that. Maybe Kelly and her new guy will go. And Pop, if you're okay with that." Tess nods. "And I thought maybe we could give the last one to Tommy's girlfriend."

"I haven't met her," Tess says, thoughtfully. "I'd have thought he'd bring her over sometime. I told him it was okay to, and he just sort of blinked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about."

"Maybe she doesn't wanna meet us," Brendan says. "Doesn't matter, I'll meet her tonight. She's on the roster."

"Take pictures," Tess says. "With your phone or something, so you don't spook her."

"If she's a fighter I doubt I can spook her." Brendan squeezes her tighter. "You good now?"

"Yeah, I guess. But if you come home banged up I am gonna be _pissed off._ You got me?"

Brendan laughs. "Yes ma'am, Mrs. Conlon." He makes a mental note to warn Tommy what kind of mood Tess is in, and goes off to get the kids back in the house so he can mow.

By mid-afternoon he can't find Tommy. He's nowhere in the house – not in his room, not in the garage or the kitchen or the family room in the basement. The bike's still in the garage. Brendan goes outside and, on the off-chance Tommy's out there, cups his hand around his mouth and yells for him. "Tom! Hey Tommy!" It's only after he's done it that he remembers that it's just that way that Mom used to call him in.

Tommy's head pops out from the treehouse, and he yells back, "Whatcha want?" He seems okay, maybe a little annoyed at being interrupted at whatever he was doing up there.

"We gotta go in about an hour. Just wanted you to know the schedule, couldn't find you in the house."

"Oh sure, no problem. I should come down anyway."

"No, no – hey, can I come up?"

"Yeah, sure."

On the way up the ladder, Brendan's thinking that Tommy's probably gotten more use out of this treehouse since he moved in in March than Emily and Rosie ever have. Maybe they're still too young to really use it, or maybe it's time Brendan admitted that he really built the thing because he and Tommy had always wanted one when they were kids. "If you build it, he will come," he mutters to himself, and then snorts. It should be ridiculous, but he remembers putting the treehouse kit together right before Rosie was born, hearing the echoes of years-ago conversations between himself and his little brother.

He'd been a Superman fan. Superman always did what was right – he was strong, he was good, he never struggled with moral questions. He just knew what to do. Tommy had liked Batman. "Batman fights smart," Tommy would say. "He doesn't just have to be strong. He figures out all this cool stuff, and he protects people. And he's got Robin at his back, too."

_Not surprising Tommy'd liked the sidekick angle_, Brendan muses now. Tommy had always been Brendan's sidekick back then.

The floor of the treehouse comes into view, and Tommy's sitting up there with his cell phone in his hand, looking sort of hopeful. "Oh hey," Brendan says. "Didn't mean to interrupt your phone call."

"No problem. I was done anyway, I was just sitting up here thinkin'. What's up?"

"Nothin' really. I got used to spending Saturday afternoons with you, and now it's a habit."

Tommy just nods, and they sit in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then Brendan says, "Tess has got the wind up about our demo thing tonight. She's worried you're gonna, I dunno, rip my face off or somethin'. I told her it's just a demo, but she's all... _what?_" He stops because Tommy has started to laugh.

"Ah, Tess. Such a mama bear. Even with you."

Hmm. Yeah, sounds right. "I guess," Brendan says. But he knows Tommy's right. And that's interesting in itself, that Tommy sees Tess that way. "She saw a clip of our fight the other day, and it made her jumpy." He sighs. "Frank still buggin' you to watch it with me?"

"Yep. I'd still rather not, though." Tommy's quiet a minute, then he adds, "I don't wanna see myself helpless. And I don't want watchin' it to be... I don't want it to take over and change the way it is in my mind. You know. At the end there. Like I could finally stop trying to carry a pile of naked knife blades. Like I could just set it down and it would stop hurtin' me."

Brendan catches his breath. He blinks back tears, nodding. He knows, all right. "We gotta hang on to the good stuff."

"Been pretty much good stuff between you and me since then," Tommy says. "Not that I don't still get mad at you over what happened, sometimes, but it ain't like I never did anything I regret neither."

"Yeah." Brendan wants to ask for details about yesterday's therapy session, but he knows better. Whatever Tommy wants to share, he will; Brendan trusts that. "Listen, I'd like to meet your girlfriend, okay? I know she's gonna be fighting tonight."

Tommy goes very still. Then he says, "You thought Jen was my girlfriend?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, you were living with her."

Tommy tilts his head to look at Brendan. "Jen is just a friend. I was sleeping on her couch. She's not my girl, and I didn't mean for you to think she was."

"Oh," is all Brendan can think to say.

"But at least that explains where she got the impression..." Tommy says, almost to himself, and then "Never mind. Past it now."

"There's somebody, though, isn't there?" Brendan asks, confused. "Tess said... Um." He stops, remembering the fingernail gouges in Tommy's shoulders last weekend.

Tommy smirks at him. "Yeah, and I don't wanna know how she knows about that stuff, okay? I don't need any more info about your sex life than I already got." Brendan feels his face go pink. It's his curse; he blushes easy. Tommy never does. "I don't know what-all you and Tess get up to, but you're not quiet."

"Never mind about me and Tess," Brendan says, "I want to hear about whoever it was diggin' her nails into you. That serious, or just a random thing?"

The smirk morphs into a genuine smile, Tommy's shy off-to-the-side one. "Serious. And I don't wanna talk about her just yet, but maybe soon. I got some... stuff to deal with, you know, before I can be good husband material. Yeah, and _then_ I gotta get a regular job or some income or somethin'."

"Husband... you _are_ serious." There's this huge roar of relief in Brendan's chest, a worry gone that he hadn't even realized he'd had. Tommy is really ready to clear the decks – and there's a girl he's serious about.

"_Hellzyeah, _I'm serious about her. But she's gonna be dealing with some of her own stuff for awhile and she needs some time, so don't expect any fancy announcements or anything, okay?"

"Sure. Sure. Not tryin' to pry," Brendan says, holding his hands up.

"Yeah, y'are," Tommy says, and grins. "It's okay, though. Happily married man and all that, you just want me happy. I get you."

Brendan nods. "Weird being up here," he tells Tommy. "I feel like I can say just about anything. Just like being in Benjy Williams' treehouse when we were kids." Tommy nods. "I thought about you all the time when I was puttin' this thing together. All the time. Like your voice in my head wouldn't go away."

Tommy turns toward him, and there's a long minute where they just look at each other. Brendan says it again: "I love you, bro."

"I love you too," Tommy says back, and Brendan swallows the lump in his throat.

"Man, it's like the confession box up in here," he says. "Treehouse confessional."

And Tommy smiles. "Yeah. Hey, is there any chance of food before we go? I'm hungry."

"When are you not hungry?" Brendan says, knowing the answer. "Yeah, let's go see."

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8

At 6:30 pm, Brendan's in the cage at the venue, looking out at a ring of faces – female fighters and their trainers, all expectantly waiting. He's got half an hour to show them a few techniques Frank thought would be both unusual and effective, plus a few minutes for him and Tommy to spar at the end, if they want to.

Brendan wants to. And Tommy does too; he's like a puppy that just wants to play and it reminds Brendan a lot of when they were kids, when Tommy had just learned some new twist and wanted to shark his big brother with it. No harm in Tommy back then, no intent to hurt... intent to _win_, sure. Never-back-down, sure. But he'd pin you and then let you up, laughing.

Brendan starts out telling the small audience who he is and who he's trained with, and then jumps right in with explaining those moves, calling Tommy up to demonstrate them and introducing him as "my brother Tommy." He's not prepared for a couple of the girls to whistle and wave, one of them calling Tommy "Hotness." However, anybody used to a classroom full of teenagers interrupting him can handle a couple of grown women doing the same, and he quells that pretty quickly, getting on to business.

They go through several kicks, the proper footwork setup for certain kinds of hand or arm strikes, and then a whole slew of wrestling holds. Brendan answers a few questions at the end, from the dark, good-looking girl in the orange tee-shirt, and then he asks if they'd like to see a sparring session. There's a chorus of yesses, and some whistling, and Brendan looks up to make sure that the doors are closed, that the promoters are not intending to open them and let people take a sneak peek. Nope, it's still a private session.

He says to the fighters as he and Tommy are putting on headgear and pads (Frank had insisted, on Tommy's behalf,_ just in case_), "This is a one-time-only deal, you guys, the Conlon Boys in the cage together in public for the second and last time. My wife has put her foot down, you see – she's afraid I'll get hurt." He smiles, and Tommy rolls his eyes, and they shove in their mouthpieces. Then the round bell. They're only going to go five minutes, tops.

It takes Brendan all of forty seconds to realize that not only is Tommy in the best shape he's ever been, incredibly fast and accurate, he's_ playing_ with Brendan. His lightning-fast strikes stop just shy of Brendan's nose or jaw; his kicks land on the pads instead of unprotected skin. The real kicker, though? The sparkle in his eyes. Brendan, wanting to prove something, goes for the takedown – and Tommy's out of it, slithering like an eel, getting up and giving Brendan another shot at him, calling "Come at me, bro!" around the mouthpiece, through a grin so big it makes him look ten years old.

"You little shit," Brendan mutters under his breath, stung and amused at the same time. Out loud he says, "You come at _me_, man!" not really thinking Tommy will take that challenge because he's so clearly playing.

But he does. He lunges for Brendan so fast he's a blur, and twenty seconds later Brendan's tapping out of an excruciatingly painful leg hold on Tommy's shoulder, completely confused as to how it happened. Tommy lets go, hops up quick, and pulls Brendan to his feet. "You okay?" he asks, and he's laughing.

Brendan's impressed. And seriously winded. And his leg, while not damaged as far as he can tell, hurts like a bitch. All the same, he turns back to their audience and says, "And _that,_ ladies and gentlemen, was a glimpse into my childhood: Tommy Conlon kicking my butt nineteen times out of twenty." Without warning Tommy's pulling him into a brief, tight hug, and then letting go, still grinning like a jack-o'lantern.

There's clapping. Whistling, cheering, and Brendan has a sudden pang for himself, still second-best on a mat most days – and a greater thrill of happiness for his brother, who's had so little else besides this.

There's time for a few introductions after the sparring, before the girls go back to their dressing rooms to prepare, and Brendan says hello to Lou Pallotta, whom he's met before, and meets Steve Lavery. They're exchanging pleasantries when he's introduced to the two "Steve's Girls": Clarice Johnson is all bounce and sass and good hard muscles, and then Jen Peretti...

Jen is not Brendan's type. Jen is nowhere near Brendan's type (that would be the fair-skinned girl-next-door cheerleader type with a great smile – i.e., Tess), but she is flat gorgeous. His first thought, beyond _Wow, what ethnicity is that beautiful face?_, is _Why isn't my brother tapping that every single chance he gets? _The very fact that he's immediately thought about sex within five seconds of meeting a woman is a novelty, because he tries to keep a lid on his naughty thoughts when it comes to women he's not married to.

Jen's smiling at him, asking if Tommy's as much of a neat freak at Brendan's place as he was at Jen's, and Brendan has to confess that Tommy developed that mania for obsessively-straightened rooms in the Corps; their childhood bedroom, cluttered with all sorts of sports memorabilia, from Steelers and Pirates banners to wrestling trophies, was a neat-freak's nightmare. "I bet that room still looks that way," he says, "God knows Pop's not gonna clean it up because he never changes a thing in that house."

Tommy overhears this and comments, "No, I boxed up all the trophies and crap when I was staying there earlier in the year – I couldn't take it anymore. God, the dust alone was incredible. It looks better now."

And then Clarice sees him and jumps right at him, yelling, "Hotness! How are ya?"

Tommy smiles. "I'm good, Clarice. You?"

"I'm fine. You got a haircut, din'tcha. You make up with ya girl?"

Tommy's ears flush deep red. Brendan's looking right at him and he sees this – and wonders _how _he could have forgotten: Tommy's face never goes pink, but if you catch the ears, they're a dead giveaway every time. But Tommy is hugging Clarice without any apparent embarrassment and then letting her to go tell her, "Hey, Clarice – listen, I caught you sparring with Alexa earlier in the week when I popped in, and you gotta remember: don't be impulsive. I know you're fast, but you gotta wait for your moment. Sit back and wait and wait and wait for the other fighter to make a mistake, okay? Don't you be the one to make the mistake because you went out too soon."

Clarice is promising she'll wait her chance (_Ha_, Brendan thinks, _no, she won't_) when Tommy turns to Jen and hugs her too. "Hey," he says, and smiles.

Jen smiles back, and Brendan is thinking she could be the triangulation of Sade, Sophia Loren, and Lucy Liu, when he catches what they're saying to each other. "Talked to your shorty on the phone today, dude," she says, and Tommy's ears go flaming red again when he grins big. _Aha, so Jen knows Tommy's girl too. _Brendan's not up on all the slang, but he knows "shorty" is an expression for "girlfriend."

"Don't gimme shit, Jen," Tommy says, but he's still grinning. "How'd you get her number, anyway?"

"She was in the bar Thursday night," Jen says. "Upset 'cause of your total failure to grovel, you dick, and she got drunk off her little round ass – and don't tell _me _that ain't your thing, you're a booty man if there ever was one." _Holy shit,_ Brendan thinks, _she's got that much right._ "Anyway, she is _insane_. I think I like her. I wasn't sure before, I thought she was Miss Sunday School, but now I am. I like her."

"She okay?" Tommy says. "I talked to her today too but she didn't say nothin' about talkin' to you."

"Oh, I hear that ain't all you did to her today," Jen says slyly, and chucks him on the shoulder. Tommy's ears could not be redder if you'd dipped him in boiling water, but Brendan doesn't care about that; he cares about that hilariously big grin of Tommy's and the openness with which he is conversing with Jen. And he wonders how both Jen and Clarice might have met this girl.

And then he wonders when on earth Tommy might have had the time to go and do something tease-worthy to his girl today, when Brendan knows he ran this morning and came back for breakfast before heading to the gym for a couple of hours. Maybe it was after the gym, before he came home.

"So you two solid together?" Jen wants to know.

Tommy shrugs a little. "Yes and no. _Yes_, like we finally apologized to each other and said how we feel, and _no_, like we're gonna take it slow for awhile. So we're tight, but we're not public with it yet. I'm down with that."

"Sounds right," Jen says, and Brendan can't hear anything but approval in her voice, no jealousy or sadness. But Tommy "said how he feels"? To a girl? That's awesome.

He gets out his cellphone and snaps a pic or two of Clarice and Steve and Lou, and then some of Jen talking to Tommy. Then he catches sight of the clock mounted near the cage and shakes his head. Time to bag this, because the doors will open in a minute. "Hey, Tommy! Let's let these girls go warm up and stuff," he calls, and Tommy nods in his direction.

"You got advice for me, Hotness?" Jen says.

Tommy shakes his head. "Nope. 'Cept you got this, Jen. You can take any girl in the room, and I'm lookin' forward to seein' you do it. Stay loose, keep to the fundamentals, remember you always got more in you, and you're good. Go kick some ass, okay?"

"Deal," she says, and then she says to Brendan, "It was great to meet you!"

"You too," Brendan says back, and then Jen disappears into the back with the rest of the girls, where the promoters have rigged up some kind of partition for their privacy. Tommy's already thrown on a tee shirt and found his Tevas. "You need something to drink?"

"Nah, I still got some water. Could use some food, though," he says, and Brendan tosses him two protein bars.

Brendan does his thing, stepping up into the cage in blue shorts and his Sparta belt to welcome people, open the tournament and talk about the possibilities for these women training in Philadelphia. And then he can get down, toss on a tee-shirt, lock the belt back up in its case and pretend he's just a guy who came to watch the fights with his brother. He enjoys watching the girls fight, though it's pretty much like any other amateur tournament. Some of them are good and some are borderline – Tommy's called Clarice on her weakness, and Jen doesn't seem to have one. Jen, it's quickly apparent, is the one to beat. She's well-rounded, a real fighter who can strike and kick and tussle, and who can take a punch (she's got a black eye – from Clarice, as a matter of fact – and it just makes her look sexier).

And by shortly after eleven, it's Jen "The Machete" Peretti who's declared the tournament winner.

By 11:15, she and Lou and Steve are surrounded by a small crowd – a local journalist or two, plus a couple of other gym owners, and a big-name trainer who has coached a couple of female Olympic boxers as well as at least one successful MMA fighter. The trainer, Sam McCloud, is interested in Jen. His gym's in New York City, and Jen would probably have to move there, but it's a big chance for her. McCloud's already started to make specific plans for training her, and it even seems like a done deal already. Lou's taking the guy's card and shaking his hand. Brendan watches McCloud pretty carefully, checking to see if he's more interested in training Jen or seducing her, but McCloud's respectful in his handshake and professional manner of speaking to her, in the way he talks into Jen's face and not into her boobs. So maybe this would be good for Jen. There's quite a bit of glad-handing going around, plenty of people wanting Brendan's autograph, and even a few who've recognized Tommy. He refuses to sign anything "Tommy Riordan," saying that he uses his real name now, but he signs a few autographs anyway.

After twenty minutes of this, Tommy leans over and says quietly that he would appreciate being able to get home and get to bed soon, and Brendan is glad to go by then. Tommy, who got hugged to death by some of the other girls from Russo's, is starting to look a little panicky around the eyes, and Brendan doesn't want that.

Once home, Tommy makes scrambled eggs for himself and Brendan, and they eat at the kitchen table. Brendan watches Tommy's shoulders gradually relax, realizing that Tommy really hates public appearances and being on display. He should have warned Tommy that winning Sparta means giving up some of your privacy; on the other hand, Tommy's got eyes. If he hadn't known before, he knows now.

The minute Brendan's finished eating, Tommy whisks his plate away and rinses it, then sticks all their dishes into the dishwasher. "If I'm not up by eight," he says, "come get me, okay? I'm tired and I've still got a phone call to make before I go to bed. I might sleep a little later than usual."

Brendan nods and gets up to go upstairs. He hopes Tess won't chew his ear off asking about Jen, because Brendan's tired too, and he doesn't want to be up half the night talking about his brother's not-girlfriend. Especially when there's someone other than Jen in Tommy's life.

Halfway to the stairs he turns around and comes back. He hugs Tommy tight, and then lets go. His brother kicked his ass... yet _again_. And Brendan wouldn't trade that for anything.

**A/N #2: So okay, I didn't feel much like writing fights. I thought about trying it. But there's more coming up with Sparta III in the next chapter and since most of us are here for the feelz and not the fights, I decided to not push it – to save my fight descriptions for the ones involving Tommy. So, yeah, this was a kind of talky chapter. Action comin' up soon...**


	48. Chapter 48: Sparta Rising

**Ch 48: Sparta Rising**

**A/N: I apologize for the delay in updating; it's been ca-RAZY around my house lately, getting my daughter packed up and off to college. (I'll be just FINE, thanks. FINE. Really. I'm not gonna MISS HER or anything... Sarcasm. Ha. And after all, what is Skype for?)**

**The first part of this chapter is for WinterIsComing01, who picked up in the last chapter that Tess has had some growing of her own to do with regards to the brother-in-law she started out merely tolerating for the sake of her husband. Mwah.**

**Little bit of NSFW stuff in here... because Kelly's getting better. :)**

Tess is getting anxious for school to start. Rosie doesn't go quite yet; she's got another year of preschool. But Emily starts second grade the same day that Tess' community college classes start this fall, and Tess is looking forward to getting back into a school year routine. She's got four solid classes this semester – Early Childhood Language and Literacy Development, Assessment of Young Children, Infant and Toddler Development and Curriculum, and a hands-on lab – and she can't wait to get hip-deep into the courses that will allow her to really start her career. Someday she'll run a daycare center of her own.

She takes a break from gathering Emily's school supplies into her Hello Kitty backpack (it's never too early to be prepared) and looks out the window. It's a little after three in the afternoon, and cloudy outside, but she can see Tommy in the backyard with both girls, hopping around like a frog and letting Rosie bop him on the head with that sequined star wand Paddy brought her. Tess stifles a snort of laughter.

It's funny, she thinks. Tommy stands on his dignity so much with her, and even with Brendan, but you get him playing with kids and he _completely_ forgets about being a tough guy. He'll pretend to be an animal, or a prince, or the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz... so long as there aren't any adults watching. It is adorable. After having seen that clip on TV last week, of him punching hell out of Brendan in Sparta I, and her getting the willies over it – well, she's been watching Tommy carefully, and she's pretty sure she was wrong to worry about him being out of control. Because, as Brendan's reminded her, not one time has either one of them returned home after one of their Saturday sparring sessions injured.

Two weeks before Sparta III, she muses. She and Brendan have a hotel room for Friday through Sunday nights in Atlantic City, and to be honest she is very much looking forward to some married-time away from their daughters, with no responsibilities.

All the same, though... playing with children and sparring with protective gear on is not the same as being in the cage for real. She hasn't seen any of Tommy's for-real fights recently, and she's dying to know if he's still the beast he was two years ago. Apparently Frank and Brendan seem to think he's more skilled and more in control, less angry. But Tess wants to see for herself. Particularly because the last conversation she heard between Brendan and Tommy about fighting had Tommy saying things like, "You know how in "Terminator" Arnold's got that eye-cam? And Iron Man, he's got that too, like all the specs on his own capabilities as well as whatever enemy he's facing? These days, it's like that – I can just look at a guy and decide where to hit him, how hard, how fast, how much punishment I gotta take before I can get the upper hand. It's kinda wild. It's like having night vision goggles when everybody else is stumbling around in the dark. You can focus really minutely on what's going on in the cage."

"Wow," Brendan had said. "Good thing I don't have to face you now."

"Yep. Good thing," and Tommy had reached over and chucked Brendan on the bicep.

There's an event going on at Frank's gym this evening, something Frank's calling a "showcase" for gym regulars and their families. It's a sort of Amateur Night, with some demonstrations of what people have been learning in the classes led by Jose and Alex the intern, and some sparring between the guys who are going pro. That means Marco Santos and Tommy, a welterweight named Leon Lopez, and there's a new guy named Keion Wills who's just gone pro on the lower levels of UFC, a light heavyweight. Frank's been impressed with the guy's work ethic, Brendan says, and hopes he'll be successful.

She knows Brendan's looking forward to seeing Tommy fight again, even if it's only sparring, and Tess is too. In fact, if she's honest she misses the fight world. Not that she ever made a lot of female friends (there's too much cutthroat competition over the fighters, to tell the truth), but she loves seeing Brendan be as physical as he can be. To her he's sexy all the time, not just in the cage, but still. It's exciting.

At dinner before they leave, Tess is watching Tommy out of the corner of her eye. He looks extremely calm, even though he's just come home from his second counseling session of the week. "You ready for this, Tommy?" she asks cheerfully as he's finishing his second plateful of veggies, baked potato and chipotle-grilled chicken.

He looks up and smiles. "Always look forward to a fight," he says. "Except when it's your boyfriend there." He nods toward Brendan, who just rolls his eyes.

"So who are you sparring tonight?" Tess takes the girls' plates to the sink and scrapes the food scraps into the garbage.

"Keion."

"Wait, wait, wait," Brendan says, leaning forward in his chair with a frown. "Isn't he a light-heavyweight? He's too big for you."

"I'm not six years old, you know," Tommy says dryly, bringing his own plate to the sink. "Here, Tess, I'll get that."

"No, no." She takes the plate from him. "You go get ready."

Over his shoulder, he tells Brendan, "You don't have to get all bodyguard on me, it's fine."

"I'm serious," Brendan says. "He outweighs you, he's not even in your weight class. You don't need to be fighting him. I don't know what Frank's thinkin'."

"Right now I'm over the limit like four pounds, okay? Tommy says. "Gotta start droppin' 'em this week. But_ today_, Keion's only got like seven pounds on me. I can handle that, it's no problem. I'm faster than he is, anyway. Get your panties unbunched, Bren."

Tess bites her lip to keep from laughing. She has a brother herself, and a sister she calls on the phone every week, but the way these two talk to each other is so annoying, and so sweet, and so hilarious... Brendan's got a big protective streak, and included in the sphere of his interest are her and the girls, his students – and Tommy. It gets to her.

This whole week Tommy's been in a good mood, and he's back to talking to the girlfriend (whoever she is) on the phone at night. She can hear his voice through the door, all warm and affectionate, sometimes laughing, sometimes slow and achy, but always with that sweetness. Thinking of it now, Tess sighs a little. She's always loved Brendan's softer side, but maybe she loves it all the more because he doesn't show it to everyone.

Tommy's softer side might be even softer than Brendan's, she thinks.

After dinner, at the Soul of a Lion Showcase, Tess is wandering around talking to people and watching out for the girls. Emily's walking with Brendan, holding his hand as he stops to chat from time to time – with Frank, with Jose, with Frank's intern Alex. Frank and Alex say hello to Emily and then nothing else, Tess notices, but Jose bends down to talk to her. Jose's got kids of his own – a son about Emily's age, who's right now running back and forth in one of the practice rings, a daughter about to start kindergarten, and a preschool age son. Jose keeps looking up to check on his wife, who – Brendan says – is recovering from stomach surgery. Her doctor had feared cancer, but the growth had turned out to be benign. All the same, poor Anita isn't even able to walk more than a few steps yet. She's here tonight, sitting near the wall very quietly. Tess will go talk to her later.

There's a brief demonstration from an adult beginner class, and then the sparring starts. Marco Santos, whom Tess remembers from when Brendan was training before the first Sparta, will be sparring with Frank. Frank's concession to his age is to wear pads and headgear; Marco has none of that. Tess watches a few minutes of this match, but she's seen Marco fight Frank before and it doesn't particularly interest her. She wanders some more, meeting other wives and girlfriends and new gym members, saying hello. Brendan disappears into the locker room with Tommy, and Emily comes back to her. There's a table of snack food (protein bars and fruit, mostly), so she finds the girls something to eat and sits with them while they eat it.

When Tommy and Brendan come back out to the main room, Tommy's taped up and ready to go, and both he and Brendan have that intensely focused look on their faces. Rosie jumps up in her chair and yells, "Daddy! Uncle Tommy! We're havin' snacks!" and Brendan looks over, but Tommy seems not to hear her. Rosie, undeterred, hands Tess her grapes and runs over to them, repeating her message about snacks.

Tommy only notices Rosie when she grabs him around the leg, but then he picks her up with a smile. "Snacks, huh? Save me some. I gotta go fight now."

"Don't get hurted," she tells him very seriously, and he shakes his head and kisses her on the nose.

"Stay away from the ring, okay?" Tommy says. "You and Em, you stay with your mom. Big guys gonna be crashin' around in there, and I don't want you hurt."

"Okay." Rosie twists in Tommy's arms. "Can I have a hug, Daddy?" Of course Brendan's got a hug for his baby girl, and he repeats Tommy's warning about staying away from the ring.

Alex the intern is fighting that welterweight, Leon, next, and then it'll be Tommy and the heavier guy. The idea here is to gain points by strikes or holds without serious injury. Frank doesn't want knockouts, he wants healthy fighters. It's all an elaborate practice exercise, Tess knows, even if some of the younger gym members don't and are getting overly impressed by how hard these guys are hitting each other.

Tess ignores the Leon-Alex sparring match and goes to talk a little while with Jose's wife Anita. Jose's been crazy busy all night along with Alex, setting things up and keeping things going, and poor Anita's trying to keep up with her children from her wheelchair. Her five-year-old daughter is sticking close, apparently feeling out of her element among all these men, but the three-year-old is having an absolute ball, running around after his older brother and giggling constantly. Every few minutes Anita's calling, "Mateo! _¡__Ven aqui!_ Get back here!" Tess has met Anita before, but now Anita looks at her and says, "You are Brendan's wife, yes? And he is Tommy's brother?"

Tess confirms that and asks how Anita's been doing lately. It turns out that the exploratory surgery revealed a benign tumor in the wall of her stomach; it was removed and she's recovering, but very slowly. "It has been difficult," Anita confides very softly. "Jose works all the hours he can, and my sister has been helping with the children and the housework, but money is tight. I am very grateful to Tommy for making us a loan from his endorsement, just until I can begin working again."

Tess blinks. She'd had no idea either that Jose needed money, or that Tommy had lent him some. She knows Tommy is living off his savings.

"It was very kind," Anita says. "Jose has worked and worked, and he even took a second job cleaning, just so he could pay our bills. But the hospital wants so much."

"Tommy has a good heart," Tess agrees, feeling a roaring in her ears. Out of Tommy's painful experience with his mom has come something really good, an empathy and kindness she's seen before but not understood the depth of. This may also be the reason he's consistently been going over to mow Kelly's grass all summer, except when he was gone – that protective feeling toward a single mother.

"He told me that he knew how difficult it can be with children when the mama is sick, and he didn't want to be paid back. But Jose would not hear of it, so we will repay him when we can, Anita adds. "A man has his pride when it comes to providing for his family, you know."

"Oh boy, do I know," Tess says with feeling.

"Mommy, I have to pee," Rosie announces in a loud whisper. Anita smiles and rolls her eyes, and her daughter Carmen says she does too, so Tess takes both of them into the small women's room to take care of business.

When they come out, Tommy is in the big practice ring, Brendan in his corner. The other guy in the ring must be Keion Wills. Tess hasn't met him yet, but Brendan's right, he's big. He's got maybe four inches on Tommy and he looks leaner but very strong, and Tess thinks maybe his longer arms and legs might be a factor in the practice fight. Jose is cornering for Keion. Frank, now showered and dressed after sparring with Marco, is refereeing. There's really no need for corners at this fight level, Tess knows; it might be simply so that the new guys get used to seeing them work.

The first round seems to be all Tommy, who is faster than his opponent. He's landing kicks and strikes, and then late in the 3-minute round he takes Keion down to the mat, holding him there. But Keion lasts the round, and the two go back to their corners.

The second round is all Tommy too – more strikes and kicks, and Tess can tell that they're designed to hit Keion in nonessential areas. Punches to the shoulder, not the liver or the face. Kicks to the thighs, not the abdomen. He's working very methodically, and although Keion has longer arms he's not landing nearly as many strikes as he should be for a practice round.

Suddenly Tommy's calling, "Time! Time!" For what, Tess doesn't know, because you don't call timeout during a fight. The rounds are timed for a reason. He charges into Keion, leaning down, and Keion's uppercut takes him in the jaw. Tommy falls, and then Tess sees what he's doing – he's curling his body protectively around little Mateo, who has once again gotten away from Anita and had apparently decided to take a shortcut to his father _through the ring._ Keion couldn't have seen the little boy behind him, though he'd nearly stepped on him. And now in the uproar around the ring, she hears Anita's voice, high-pitched with worry, calling for Mateo.

"What's goin' on?" she hears Brendan demand, and then "Oh. Tom, you okay?"

Jose is climbing into the ring, looking panicked, and Keion is bewildered until he turns around to see Tommy sitting up with a crying Mateo in his arms. Tommy's speaking Spanish to Mateo, turning him so he can see Jose. _"__Mateo, sabes que tu papi está ocupado ahora. Y nunca en el cuidrilatero, ¿me oyes? Nunca. No es seguro para los niños __pequeños__."_ Tess' Spanish is good enough to pick that up – Tommy telling Mateo that his father is busy and he should never be in the ring, it's not safe for little boys.

Tommy releases the frightened little boy into his father's arms, and looks up at Frank. "Sorry about that – I didn't know how else to stop."

Keion, who's quite young, keeps repeating that he didn't even _see _the kid, he didn't know.

"You hurt?" Frank says, running a hand across Tommy's jaw.

"Bruised is all, I think. Can we go again?" He waves Frank off and stands up, turning to Keion. "Hey, man, it's fine. I could tell you didn't know he was there but I couldn't think how to call things off until we got him out of the way. Let's just start over, okay?"

"You were ahead in the points until that point," Frank tells Tommy. "You want to just start that round again?"

"Start the round again," Keion says.

"Nah, we can start over completely," Tommy says. "We've both had more rest than usual. I'm fine."

"No, we're gonna start this round again," Frank says, and Keion nods. "Soon as Jose's got his puppy on the leash."

Tess rolls her eyes at Frank, who is never at his best with children, and goes to sit with Anita, to help her keep Mateo out of trouble. She pulls her emergency stash of small coloring book and crayons out of her purse, along with Rosie's favorite Polly Pocket doll, and hands them to the little boy. She misses the rest of the match, tuning out all the noise, but when she looks toward Brendan and sees him grinning she knows Tommy's won.

Frank asks everybody there to give the four fighters – Leon, Marco, Tommy and Keion – their support, to go see them fight if possible, and to give them a round of applause for their hard work. Tess can't clap; she's suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of pride and gratitude, and disappointment in her own judgment of Tommy.

All this time, she's thought that she's been doing Tommy a favor by letting him stay. And that she's been doing something nice for her husband by letting his brother into their lives. She's taken for granted how much her daughters love him; she was gratified by Tommy's finally accepting her as his sister-in-law. But she's never realized until now how much good he's done for _her_.

Seeing him persevering through all the crap in his life and making something good out of it; letting go of old wounds; doing kindnesses for people who need them; letting that hard-ass shell thin a little bit as he realizes people do love him... Tess finds herself wanting to be a better person because of Tommy.

It's a little chaotic with getting everybody ready to go, so she doesn't tackle him until later, until they're back home. When the girls have been bathed and put to bed, and Tess comes down to the kitchen to find Tommy eating something (as usual) and holding ice to his jaw, she goes and sits in the chair next to him. He looks at her in surprise.

"I didn't know you spoke Spanish, Tommy," she says, unsure how to start.

"I _don't,_ really. But I can carry on a conversation with a three-year-old, my vocabulary's about on that level." He grins.

"I took it in high school, and I used to use it at work some," Tess explains. She's still not sure how to say what she needs to say, but she's just going to have to jump in. "Listen, Tommy..." She trails off.

"You need somethin', Tess?" He looks at her, steady as his brother, and she can tell him now.

"Yeah. I need to tell you how glad I am that you came to stay with us. Because I would have gone on thinking that I already had all my family and I didn't need you in it, you were Brendan's excess baggage and you had nothing to do with me. And I was wrong. Really, really wrong."

Tommy blinks in surprise, and Brendan walks to the table from where he's been grabbing a beer out of the fridge. He sits down, looking at her intently. "Tess?"

She doesn't answer Brendan; there's no need to. "I love you," Tess tells Tommy. "Not just because you're Brendan's brother and I love him, because that's how it was even up until recently. I was really glad to have you back, and I was really happy that you seemed to finally accept me. But I've just understood – I needed another brother, and you're it. You're_ my_ brother, too." She reaches over to kiss him on the cheek, seeing him blink rapidly.

He doesn't say anything, but he leans in for the kiss and then kisses her cheek too, and she knows he's too moved to talk. He puts his hand on the top of her head and smoothes it down, the way he does Emily's hair, and smiles at her.

"I'm kind of tired," she tells him and Brendan. "I'm going up to bed now."

Tommy nods, and Brendan says, "Wait, I'll come up with you."

"No, you go ahead and finish rehashing, I know I interrupted that. I'll see you in a little while." She kisses her husband's cheek too, and goes upstairs to brush her teeth and say a few prayers – for her brother Tommy and the rest of her family, and for herself, that she would be less quick to judge and more quick to love.

When Brendan comes in, he sits on the bed to take off his shoes. "So what was all that about? I mean, I'm happy... it's just... _what?_"

Tess tells him about Jose and the loan. And how her fears of Tommy as the relentless Terminator in the cage have gone straight out the window. And how much she's gotten out of seeing him grow as a person while he's been with them. By the end of it, she's crying in his arms, and Brendan's a little sniffly too.

"I didn't know," she says, wiping her eyes, "that our house could hold any more love. But it can. There's plenty to go around, and then some."

Brendan kisses her softly. "Since you bring it up..." he takes a deep breath and dives back in, "and you can say no, it's okay, I just wanted to ask... what would you think about having another baby?"

"Funny, I've been thinking about asking you that for a couple of months," she says, and smiles. "Yes, I'd like to. Let's."

"Just like that?" His eyebrows go up.

"I'm sure. It might slow down my career plans a little, but it can't stop me. I want another baby, Brendan. I want to see another combination of you and me, and I am thrilled at the idea of more love in this house."

"Well, then," he says, and he blinks rapidly too. Clears his throat. "Well, then, how about we get started on that?"

"I'll toss my pills at the end of this cycle." Tess has not felt guilty about limiting her family with medical birth control rather than the Catholic-approved rhythm method. She feels (slightly) guilty that she hasn't felt guilty. But it's nice to know that at least for awhile, she can make love with her husband with absolutely nothing between them, with the wonder of new life a possibility every time they touch each other. "And we can practice tonight."

He smiles and pulls her more firmly into his arms. "You are wearing way too many clothes for that," he tells her, and takes them off her with the ease of experience. "Now come here."

It's so good to lie in bed with him, feeling his solid heartbeat against hers and the rough scrape of his chest hair against her breasts, feeling his kisses heated and sweet on her neck. And when he pushes her back against the pillows and she can feel the softness of his hair on her thighs, she sighs with pure happiness. It's so, so good when he pulls her on top of him and presses inside her, gentle and hot, filling her up, holding her hips and helping her move, sighing her name when her back arches in climax, sighing it again when he finishes inside her with a burst of heat.

Afterward, drifting off spooned in his arms, she thinks how lucky she'd been all those years ago to catch the eye of that cute wrestler in the green-and-white singlet. How lucky that he is who he is, and that he's hers.

8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8 * 8

Tommy's had a good couple of weeks. Seems like lately, all he's been doing is talking. Though that's not strictly true. He's quiet on his runs – if people call out "Hey!" he just waves – and he's pretty quiet at the gym unless he has something specific to say, but the second he gets back to Brendan's, it's yak yak yak all the time. If it isn't the kids (both sets, Tess' and Kelly's) begging him to play it's Brendan wanting to talk strategy. Or it's time for his twice-weekly therapy session with Kevin Hall. And he's even gone to Kelly's counseling session once, too. And he talks to Kelly for half an hour, maybe an hour, every night before going to sleep. It's _weird. _

It is particularly weird that he kind of likes it. Years of silence, unless he was talking trash or giving orders with the guys, or hanging with Manny and Pilar and their kids – they seem almost unreal, that he could go so long without saying something.

He's been working through a bunch of shit with Kevin. They started with the Corps stuff, because that's the most recent stuff and the stuff that still gives him vivid nightmares from time to time. But then there's all the shit with his parents, and his broken-and-repaired relationship with Brendan, too. And Kelly, he talks about Kelly and her boys and his hopes. He talks about fighting, some, as well. Kevin doesn't do a whole lot of talking; he listens. And then he asks questions. And while Tommy's answering them, sometimes he begins to see things differently.

It's interesting. He feels less alone. Less like a waste of oxygen, more hopeful and more like a person people want to have in their lives. And when Tess tells him she loves him, and he's the brother she never realized she needed – well, it makes him feel sixteen feet tall.

_Joy._ That's a thing that's been missing practically all his life, except in flashes and spurts, but these days it comes around a lot more often.

It seems to spill out a lot, too. He spends those evenings talking to Kelly – telling each other stories, talking about her job or his training, talking about the boys and what hilarious stuff they've been up to recently, her still-conflicted feelings about Mike, her worry about her mother's mental state and her stepfather's physical one. And they talk about _them_. About love, about making a life together. About God, sometimes.

Kelly isn't trying to dodge Sparta III these days; she's been working hard on desensitization exercises with her therapist. But she says she doesn't have a babysitter for the boys, not over that length of time with overnights, so they're at an impasse with it. Until Tess mentions that her parents are going to come stay at the house to take care of Emily and Rosie, and he catches Tess in a private moment.

"Do you think your mom could handle a couple more kids?" he asks. "Just askin'. If not, that's that. It's okay."

"Jack and Martin, you mean?" Tess asks.

He nods. "I'd really like for Kelly to be there, but childcare is an issue for her. If that doesn't work out, it just doesn't."

"Well, let me ask my mom, but those boys are good kids and not much trouble. I know she loves having all her grandkids at the house at once, so she can probably handle it. And Kelly's such a good friend, I know you want her there – let me call Mom, okay?"

Tommy opens his mouth to say that it's not just that Kelly's a friend, and then closes it. Telling people about their relationship has not come up in conversation yet, and he's been ambivalent about bringing it up. So he doesn't feel, right now, that he can say anything to Tess yet. He needs to talk to Kelly about it first. He just nods. "Thanks, Tess."

During their evening phone call he asks Kelly, "You haven't been talking to Tess much lately, have you?"

"Some," she says cautiously. "We talk about the kids, and work, and our families. We haven't had much girl time, though."

"I can't understand why nobody has figured out I'm crazy about you. I mean, Frank knows. And I swear, if somebody asks me about it I'm tellin' the truth."

"I feel like that too. Not ready to go around throwing confetti and getting matching friendship bracelets or something, but if someone asks they'll get an honest answer from me."

He smiles. That's good enough. For now, anyway. He's still dealing with his own shit with Kevin, and he wants to clear his own decks too.

"Joe figured it out. But, as he said, he's a detective. It's what he does. And of course Jen knows. You know she called me last week?"

"That's cool. She said she was gonna. I went over one afternoon to help pack up some of her stuff, and we talked about you some." It had been a fun day, with Cole and Dagan helping her shove stuff in boxes and tape them up, making stupid puns and throwing packing peanuts at each other.

"I like her. She's sort of outrageous," Kelly says, and she's smiling. "But she has a good heart. Tells me stuff straight out. She's not Tess, but I think we could really get to be good friends if we got to know each other better." There's a little pause, and she adds, "I Kind of miss talking to Tess. But we've just been so busy. We have talked some about what's going on with my counseling – like the exercises on reshaping my thinking about my body and stuff."

"There is nothing wrong with your body," he says fervently. "Absolutely nothing."

"Well, you know... I do have, like, stretch marks. Normal for two pregnancies. Not very Playboy, though."

"Hmm," he says.

"Don't tell me you didn't notice them."

He has. But that's because he's seen every single inch of her in broad daylight, and they're not that bad. Noticeable, but only if you're looking hard with a critical eye, which is something he's rarely capable of when he's that horny. Overall, she's so gorgeous. It's not like he doesn't have flaws. And if he is perfectly honest about the issue, noticing those faint marks and knowing why they're there... well, what it makes him _want _to do is get her knocked up himself. It's a power thing, or a balls thing or something – to be able to point to some cute pregnant woman and say,_ I did that. Me. My boys did their thang, and I put that right there. That's mine. KaPOW._

He tries explaining that, and there's just silence on the other end of the phone for a minute or two. And then she says, "Well. Okay, if you say so," and she's _thiiiiis _close to laughing.

"Yeah. And let's not talk about that anymore because I am getting a raging hard-on, okay?"

"Oh." She takes a deep breath. "Okay, you need to not tell me about those. Because it gets to me, and then I do stupid things like unlock my window."

He can tell from her voice that he really is getting to her, and now she's thinking about it as much as he is, and he can't help grinning. Apparently she's missing touching him about as much as he's missing touching her. "Oh yeah? You know, I had this massive boner in the shower this morning when I was thinking about you – "

"Stop it."

"Well, you have seen my boners, right? Pretty impressive. I was thinking about how you can barely get your little short-fingered hand around – "

"Stopppp iiiiit! You're being insensitive."

"_Insensitive?_ I'm the one with the boner here."

"Yeah, and I'm the one wanting to – You know, I'm getting off the phone now before I do something dumb."

"Awww, Kelly, don't hang up. C'mon, I'll stop."

"For now," she says, and laughs. "No, seriously, I love it that you think about me like that. Just, you know, save it. When it's time, I am not gonna turn you loose."

"Oooooh. Sounds dangerous. Bet you dig your nails in and everything."

"Tommy."

"Fine, I will stop. Listen, I might possibly have mentioned to Tess that I would love for you to come see me fight, and if she can help locate overnight childcare for you I'd be really happy. So she's on the case, okay? She's gonna ask her mom. She says her mom loves having all six grandkids around and it might work out. And if it doesn't? Well, I'll just see you when I get back."

"You're gonna do awesome," she tells him, and even though he knows she can't tell an armbar from an uppercut, her faith in him feels so, so good.

"I love you, woman."

"Well, just you remember that when all those girls in tight miniskirts are screaming your name," she says, and she sounds happy instead of jealous. "Remember I'm trusting you with my heart same as you're trusting me."

And that feels so good too, being trustworthy. It's a thing he'd almost stopped thinking of himself as being, after the desertion. After ten years of mutual trust and dependence on his fellow Marines, it is excellent to be in that position again.

"Well, I don't want you layin' for me with your daddy's firewood axe," he says, with a catch in his throat. "So I'm keepin' it in my pants unless you're around, okay? Trust me on this one."

"I love you too," she says. "Hey. I have another session on Friday. Can you come to that one like you did last week, or are you busy?"

"I'm seeing Kevin Friday, sorry. And then I have to pack up on Saturday because Frank is taking Marco and me up to AC early. We're gonna hole up in the hotel suite and watch tape when we're not listening to damn Beethoven and doing relaxation exercises."

"Tape?"

"You know. Video of the other guys on the fight cards. Watching for patterns – strengths and weaknesses, habits, stuff like that. We've done some of it already but Frank's kind of obsessive about it close to the tournament."

"So you're leaving when?"

"Sunday morning early. Can I see you on Saturday? Maybe not alone though, I don't know if I can keep my hands off you."

"Tommy, stop teasing me." She's breathless again, and that aching need is back in his chest again (rapidly migrating lower).

"All I _said_ – "

"Stop it, you know I want you."

"Really glad you do. Really, really glad. Listen, I'm gonna go to sleep now. You okay to sleep?"

She sighs. "Yeah. Dream about me, okay?"

"You too."

His Friday session with Kevin is good; they go through some of the ways that the friendly-fire bombing echoed a lot of Tommy's childhood fears and hurts and led to a lot of the same feelings. Kevin gets it, which still sort of amazes Tommy, but he's starting to realize that he feels ashamed of the whole thing in ways similar to Kelly's shame over what she went through, and that being open to support from other people makes the shame melt away. Harder to let go of is the idea that a real man just endures pain. But that was Pop's generation, and even if Pop believed it and taught it to him and Brendan, Tommy doesn't have to buy it now.

On Saturday, after they've done half an hour of light sparring, Brendan asks him if he'd mind keeping the kids while he takes Tess to dinner and to see a movie. The second-run movie place has got "The Great Gatsby," and Tess has been making noises about wanting to see it for a couple of months now. "You mind? Tess was gonna find something on Netflix for them, and you can feed them a frozen pizza or something."

"Rather do breakfast for dinner, if that's okay. But yeah, I'll hang with them. Hey – can we have Kelly and her boys over too?"

"Sure."

So it's settled.

Tess and Brendan leave at 5:30pm, dressed nicely and holding hands, smiling at each other with anticipation. Tommy and Kelly make scrambled eggs and turkey sausage, sauteed potatoes and vegetables, plus whole wheat toast with Nutella and strawberries for dessert. It's nice cooking together, bumping into each other and catching each other's eye with affection from time to time. After dinner the kids help put plates in the dishwasher, and Tommy goes down to the family room with them to put on some kid movie Tess has already picked out for them.

He comes back upstairs to help Kelly with the few dishes that can't go into the dishwasher, and tell her that Tess's parents are excited about the prospect of having a couple of extra kids to play with all weekend. "So you can go."

"Really, wow." Kelly's got her beautiful big lit-up smile on, and he smiles back.

"Yeah, Tess is awesome. Haven't met her parents yet, but I figure they're probably awesome too."

"That's so sweet of them. I'll have to do something nice for them – make them a pound cake or something."

"Bear claws from the good bakery," Tommy suggests. "And muffins for the boys. I'll find out from Tess what her parents like best."

"I'm gonna miss you when you're gone," she says, drying her hands on a towel and sounding a little sad. "But I'll be honest, it's a lot easier to not sit around and think around ripping your clothes off when I know you're not likely to show up in my bedroom in the middle of the night."

"Would that be such a bad thing?" he asks her, his hands tingling with the urge to touch her. "I mean, I thought you've been making a lot of progress on this stuff with your doctor."

"I have. I just don't want to mess that up," she says wistfully.

Tommy steps close to Kelly, there in Tess' kitchen. The kids are playing something downstairs, he can hear them, but they sound totally engrossed in it; they're not likely to come up and he can't _stand _not kissing Kelly any more. Not after the three weeks of getting closer without touching, not with Sparta III looming like a battle... he needs her. "I don't think we could mess that up. I feel like we're solid, you know?"

Kelly backs up a step, making room between them, but he takes another step toward her. "Well," she says, and stops there. She backs up again, and he follows again. Because his steps are bigger, he gets even closer to her every time she moves. After the third step back she stops. "This is ridiculous," she says, and even though she mostly sounds annoyed, there's a little thread of amusement somewhere in her voice, and an edge of breathlessness too, like his being close is affecting her. Well, good.

"Cut it out, Tommy," she says, and the amusement is bigger this time – it's almost the sound of a teenage girl liking being teased by a teenage boy and pretending not to like it, which he certainly remembers. "Don't touch me."

"I'm not touching you," he says, as he inches closer, as close as he can get without making actual body contact with her – if she touches _him_, he's off the hook. He leans his head into the space above her shoulder, still centimeters away, and inhales: flowers and leather, his favorite one of the perfumes she loves. _Ahhh, Kelly._ His body starts to take notice too.

"Don't kiss me, either," she warns, and this time the breathlessness is worse. He's definitely getting to her.

"I'm not kissing you." He's not breaking a single one of her rules. He inhales again, catching the smell of her shampoo as well as her perfume and the warmth of her neck.

"What are you doing?" she asks, almost whispers, and he can't keep from smiling a little.

"I'm smelling you." _And remembering the feel of your tits in my hands and the way you look naked on your back with your legs spread apart for me. Letting you drive me fucking insane with the need and the sweetness, just like always._

And even though she can't see his face, doesn't know what he's saying in his head, it's like she can anyway. Because suddenly she steps closer, pressing herself right up against him, and the breath goes out of him at the feel of it, of _her_, warm and soft and close. "Why, _Sergeant _Conlon," she says, mock-innocent, "I had no idea you were carrying a dangerous weapon. In your pants."

"Dangerous," he agrees, and it comes out almost a growl. In answer, she puts her lips to the hollow of his throat and pulls the skin into her mouth, a sucking-biting kiss, and he does growl. Her arms go around his waist and she licks the place where she's just bitten him. He's still trying to keep his upper brain function, to think, but it's getting more and more impossible, so he slides his arms around her too, and whispers a desperate invitation. "There's a bed in my room, and the door locks. Give me ten minutes, bet I can make you come."

She presses closer, and runs her tongue up his neck. "I bet you can too," she murmurs against his throat, and her hands slide down to his ass. "But no. We shouldn't. And Brendan and Tess'll be home soon."

"I don't fucking care." _Please please please_. He can only beg in his mind, not out loud, but he's doing it pretty hard. "_Five_ minutes." She can't be all that opposed, not with her hands on his ass and her mouth on his neck like this.

"Well, you _are_ desperate, aren't you," she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. "Say please."

_Well, okay_. "Please," he whispers in her ear, and then he kisses her earlobe. She makes a purring sort of noise in her throat, and when he takes the earlobe into his mouth she moans softly.

"That's more like it," she says, voice still full of her smile. "A bed and a lock, you say? We have to be quick."

"Mmm," he says, unable to say much more. "Yeah." Most of the blood has left his brain now, logic and speech and higher brain function beginning to give way to instinct, which is telling him he needs her underneath him, like _now, _like three minutes _before_ now. He walks backward, pulling her with him, and it's a matter of maybe twelve steps to his bedroom. He locks the door with one hand, sliding the other up under her scrub top to find her breasts.

She shakes him off and walks to the bed, turning her back to him and taking her top completely off, and his first thought is _Come back here_, and then the second is _Oh yeah, like that,_ because she's kicking off her shoes and giving him a seductive look over her shoulder. He yanks his trackies and boxers down, kicks them off, steps close, and strips her panties and scrub pants off, bending her over and reaching between her legs to slide his fingers along her pink folds, feeling her slippery and trembling. He rubs her there, back and forth, and she moans softly, arching her back.

He moves one hand to her hip and stares fascinated at the way his cock looks, swollen and flushed, against the paleness of her beautiful butt. This is _not _going to take long. He pushes inside her _God, that's so good_, and leans up against her back the way she likes, still rubbing her little pearl, and she clenches down on him, causing them both to stifle moans. He's not sure how long it is before she comes, it's probably only the five minutes he begged for but it feels like time without end there inside her. As her back arches more and she gasps into the pillow he can feel her inner walls vibrating around him, and when she stops he leans back up, gets a good grip on both her hips, and plunges into her hard and fast, giving in to the ancient male impulse to drive his body deep into hers over and over. She looks at him again over his shoulder, and reaches back to hold his forearms, pulling him deeper into her, and the way she's fully _there_ with him in this animal, primal mating just pulls him right to the edge. He wants to see it, see the evidence on her body, so he pulls out to finish on her sweet round ass, taking a good long-exposure mental picture of it for the permanent file before he collapses onto the bed next to her.

"_Damn,_ baby," he manages to say as he lies there just breathing for a few minutes.

She gives him an incredulous, amused, look as he reaches to the bedside table for a handful of tissues. "You just came _all over_ me," she says, mock-annoyed. "What a mess." He grins, and she gives him her gorgeous lit-up smile back.

"Yep. Marking my territory," he tells her, rising up on one elbow to gently clean her off.

"Oh, now I'm your territory, huh?"

"Damn fucking _straight, _this is mine," he says, patting her ass and tossing the tissues into the trashcan. "It's a good thing you took your top off, because that went everywhere."

"Mmm," she says, and rolls onto her side to kiss him. "I know we shouldn't have done that, but I'm having difficulty feeling sorry about it."

"I don't feel sorry about it at all," he says. "I'm glad. I can't wait to do it again."

She smiles, and they kiss some more, sweet open-mouth kisses. "I love being with you. And I'm feeling more and more like we might be able to handle it now, but I'd like to get Dr. Hostettler's approval first. I'll talk to her on Monday, tell her how I feel."

"No, I understand. I don't wanna get in the way of you dealing with stuff, you know? But anytime you wanna go public with this I'm good. I'm ready."

"Soon," she says. "Let's plan on after the tournament, okay?"

"Yeah. Gonna really miss you while I'm holed up with Frank and Marco in the hotel suite this week. At least I got some good memories to take with me."

"I'll miss you too." She looks over his shoulder at the clock. "Whoops. We'd better get dressed."

Then there's the thump-thump-thump of kid feet on the stairs, and small voices calling out, "Mom! Mommy, I'm hungry!" and "Uncle Tommy, can we have a snack?"

"Oh shit," he says, and they both laugh, pulling clothes on fast.

"That was good timing, though," she says. "Kiss me." He does. Then they go out of his room and close the door behind them, and Kelly goes straight into full-on Mom mode, opening bananas and handing out graham crackers to the kids, and he pours milk for them and leans against the counter listening to happy kid noise and eyeing Kelly's beautiful round ass, completely his territory, and thinking, _Someday it will be this good all the time_.

And all evening he keeps flashing on bits of the whole episode, from leaning in to smell her perfume to her grip on his forearms, and he can't stop the smile that comes up every time. Doesn't much want to stop it, either, even if Kelly's avoiding his gaze while wearing this tiny little Mona Lisa smile. Every now and then he'll catch her eye, and she'll bite her lip and look away, but not before that little spark flies.

And right before she leaves with the boys, he manages to catch her in private and kiss her, swiftly but thoroughly. "See you at the tournament. Can't wait for it."

She puts her hands on his face and kisses his nose. "I'll be there for you."

**A/N: Good grief, I got babies on the brain this week. Probably because I'm sending mine off on her own... but I will tell you that I stole my husband's _exact_ words on making a woman pregnant, and gave them to Tommy. Cracks me up that he refers to his, um, masculine equipment as "my boys."**


	49. Chapter 49: Sparta Begins, Part 1

**Ch 49: Sparta Begins**

**A/N: I'd originally intended for this chapter to cover the entire Sparta III tournament, and it was just getting too long... so now it's gonna be THREE chapters. Gah, I'm longwinded. We'll still finish around ch 61 or 62, though, don't worry. :) **

**I'd also like to point out that Paddy's got some_ really _old-fashioned ideas about women (and minorities); don't take them personally. I don't buy into that way of thinking, and you shouldn't either. Some father-son angst here, and some romantic fluff, some descriptions of violence . You've been warned.**

Paddy Conlon pulls his rolling suitcase behind him into the hotel in Atlantic City. He thinks it's not the same one he'd been in with Tommy before, but all these resort hotels run together in his mind. They've all got suites with big-screen TVs and mini-bars, a restaurant, pretty girls working the front desk.

He checks in with one of those pretty girls at the front desk, giving his name and offering his Visa card, but the pretty blonde helping him tippety-taps away at her computer keyboard and says, "Mr. Conlon, looks like someone else has reserved you a room in a suite and it's all paid for. I have a message here – "

Paddy cuts her off. "You sure you don't have me mixed up with somebody else, doll? It's _Patrick_ Conlon, might be a couple others with that last name here." He is supposed to be joining Campana's party, but Tommy will be here, and of course Brendan too, later in the week.

"Yes, sir, the message says you'll be in a suite with a Mr. Thomas Conlon, just go on up and get settled in. I have a key for you..." she goes on, telling him about the breakfast buffet and the pool and the casino and the exercise room, and all the while he's nodding and not paying a bit of attention. Tommy's here already, probably upstairs. He'll go up and call Tom's cell phone.

He hasn't seen either one of his sons since the weekend before Father's Day, nearly three months ago. And while Brendan's been chattier than usual in their twice-monthly Sunday-afternoon phone conversations, Tommy's kept his mouth pretty much shut, other than discussion of his physical condition and how training's going. Nothing personal. Paddy's been counting on this weekend to figure out what's going on with Tommy. What with the running off and coming back, and his asking questions about his mother, and the way he hasn't talked even once about that sweet little Kelly girl, not even after he looked at her that way in June – well, it's easy to see that there's something going on there. But he can't ask. _Paddy cannot ask._ He has to wait, hat in hand, until his son opens up; Tommy's made that clear. He hasn't exactly been the father figure his boys needed in the past, he knows that.

But it galls him all the same. Because he feels different in himself, he feels like a different man now. He acts the way fathers should act, regardless of whether Brendan and Tommy notice or not. The change matters to him. He just wishes that the change mattered more to his sons.

He's thinking all these things on the way up to the room in the elevator, pulling his own suitcase. (The thing _has_ a handle, why should he tip a grown man in a monkey suit to carry it up for him when he can manage it easily by himself?)

When he opens the door to the suite, Tommy and Frank Campana are sitting there with two other guys – another fighter named Marco, and a younger guy Frank's calling his "intern." The only interns Paddy knows about are the ones that work for Congressmen, and he's never thought of them as being much use. They're watching film and critiquing fight styles, but they stop the film while Tommy makes his gruff introductions, and Paddy shakes hands all around.

"Gonna go get settled," Paddy says, and looks at his son. "Which one's mine?"

Tommy inclines his head toward the room to the left, and Paddy heads that way. He closes the door as he unpacks his things – if he's going to be there for five days, he'd like to have his clothes hanging up properly to get the wrinkles out. He doesn't have much skill with an iron, even now that his hands are steady all the time.

Unpacked, he looks around. The way the suite's arranged, it's a flip-flopped version of the one they stayed in last time – his room on the left and Tommy's on the other this go-round. Not much view out the window, just the streets of Atlantic City. He can't see the ocean. It's fine, though, he won't be in here all that much. He'll be checking Tommy's diet and watching him work out, watching for any little problems, any hitches in his motion or maladjustments.

And as far as he can tell, he'll be a sort of flunky to Frank Campana. A little galling, but then he has to admit, he never planned for this at all. He'd been surprised as hell two years ago when Tommy'd asked him to train him for this tournament. After fourteen years of nothing, after that one evening of insults and pain... and then Tommy'd said he wanted to talk, and come to think of it, he'd never officially asked. Just said he needed a trainer and that Paddy had been good at that, at least.

Tell the truth, he'd have jumped at the chance to get closer to his son no matter what. Didn't matter that Tommy hadn't _asked_, didn't matter that there was no mention of pay. None of it mattered. And Paddy had shamelessly used training as an excuse to have Tommy stay with him. There'd been no real need for that. As a convenience, sure – easier to have all the meals under his eye and lessen the chance of Tommy's breaking training, easier to eliminate the complication of travel time if Tommy was staying somewhere else.

But what he'd wanted all along was to start over. To be the father he hadn't been. And Tommy had thrown it back in his face every time he tried. All the same, there remains something good between the two of them. Tommy seems to have requested that Paddy join the rest of the crew here – and early, too. Maybe he'll feel like talking before the fights start on Saturday.

The rest of the week is uneventful. They eat, sleep, watch film and comment on it. The two fighters work out some, but gently. They're both ready. Campana is apparently hoping his two guys don't have to face each other; Paddy's hoping they will, because Tommy'd win that one. He seems to get along pretty good with Marco, though, teasing him about the girls that follow him around like a vapor trail follows a plane.

Tommy looks good. He's made his fight weight already – 184.7 pounds – and his muscle development and flexibility are excellent. You can't wear him out. He's relaxed. Determined, but not angry. He's brushed up on his wrestling again, and filled out his style with elements Paddy's never even seen before. Only gradually does Paddy begin to recognize what Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Sambo are, and how they intersect with boxing and wrestling, and finally Paddy is able to let go of his frustration of just getting Tommy back and then losing him to another coach. Paddy couldn't have taught him this stuff, didn't even know it existed_ to_ be taught.

As the week wears on and the resort hotels in AC fill up with vacationers and UFC people and Sparta officials and fighters and their entourages, it gets harder and harder to go about your business unmolested. Tommy dodges most of the reporters and photographers, and if he can't, he answers most questions politely and with the most succinct responses he can manage. He answers questions about training with Frank Campana, about how he likes his chances, about specific potential opponents. Somebody says something about his most recent sparring match with Mad Dog Grimes and Colt Boyd kicking him out of his gym, and Tommy merely says brusquely that it's called Colt's Gym for a reason, and that he'll take Grimes on again any day.

Tommy puts off questions about his personal life and his relationship with Brendan with a noncommittal, "Things are going well for me [us] right now." He will not, however, answer any question about the Marine Corps, or the war in Iraq, or his military confinement; he says only, "I can't comment on that," in a flat tone of voice. Something of the ferocity inside him must show, though, because the reporters only ask those questions one time each. Some of them even thank him for his military service. For photos, he stands still and serious. No smile, but no glowering either. He and Frank and Paddy speak to some of the sponsors, and Tommy seems willing to do more endorsements – the brand of running shoes he wears, Tapout clothing, Powerade. Contracts are promised. Paddy's glad: each one of those endorsements means money Tommy doesn't have to get beat up to earn, and Tommy's willingness indicates that he thinks he's got a career.

But Paddy's wrong about one thing: Tommy doesn't want to talk. Back in the room in the evenings, he takes a shower and goes to bed early. Half the time he's got his earphones in, listening to music. He says goodnight to Paddy, is perfectly pleasant, but still impersonal.

On Friday, Paddy and Tommy happen to be in the lobby of the hotel talking to Alex about lunch when Grimes and Boyd and their group check in. Tommy watches Grimes swagger across the carpet, and he's wearing an expression that's awfully close to a sneer. Once they've checked in, though, Boyd and Grimes and the other guys head for the elevators, Grimes with his hand familiarly on the backside of his girl, a leggy blonde in a tight blue skirt. Except for one guy, a familiar-looking chink guy who comes over to Tommy with a smile and his hand out to be shaken.

Paddy takes a quick glance at his son, and is a little surprised to see Tommy grinning. "Hey, Fenroy, howya doin'?"

"I'm good. I'm the stepan fetchit on this go-round, and since I didn't get to come the last two times I figured it was worth puttin' up with Dog's sorry ass to be here. Lookin' forward to seein' you fight, man."

"Good to see you, man. You remember my dad?"

Fenroy turns his smile on Paddy. "Sure do. Paddy, right?"

Paddy nods. "Never knew your first name." This is his way of finding it out.

"Jonathan. But everybody 'cept my mother calls me Fen. Even my girlfriend calls me Fen." He laughs while they shake hands.

Tommy introduces Alex Marshall, and the two guys exchange pleasantries before Tommy starts talking to Fenroy again. Pretty unusual to see Tommy take the lead in a conversation, Paddy thinks, and also that it's nice to see him look just a little like the happy kid he'd been when he started high school. "Things okay at Colt's?"

"Yeah, you know, Colt an' me, we get along okay. Since Mad Dog got to the semifinals again last year at this thing, and he won four outta his his five UFC fights, membership's way up. Colt's makin' noises about expanding. Finding a bigger place, you know. Nicer one that don't smell like old sweaty socks."

"Oh yeah? He gonna sell?"

"He might. I'd buy if it I had any money."

"Heard you did okay in the Amateurs." Tommy grins at Fen.

"Yeah, not too bad. Hopin' to bust into UFC soon, but until I beat Mad Dog in the sparring more consistently Colt says no."

"You'll get 'im," Tommy says with confidence. "Also heard Koba retired, you hear that?"

"Yep. Tore his ACL real bad this summer, sparring with somebody, and decided that since he's 36 and he won this thing last year, he's done."

"Good thing, too," Tommy says with feeling. "He's the guy that was givin' me nightmares."

"Couldn't believe your brother beat him," Fenroy says, and then looks sorry he said it. "You, um, you're stayin' with him – your brother? That goin' okay?"

"Goin' good. He's comin' in this evening with some friends, they'll be here for the whole thing."

"Great. Hey, call me sometime, willya? Maybe after it's over, I don't want Colt thinkin' I'd pass on any secrets or anything. In either direction."

"Like you would." Tommy shakes his head. "Gimme your number, okay?" They go through the business of exchanging numbers on those little cell phone things. Paddy doesn't have one. Doesn't trust them, really, and he's heard they cause brain cancer.

Fenroy says see ya, and he's gone, but Tommy looks happy until another reporter comes over, and he answers a few questions before telling her he's got another commitment. He actually smiles at her, saying that, and she looks a little star-struck as she's thanking him for his time.

The "commitment" is a late lunch, and while they're eating, Paddy subtly checks Tommy's appearance. He looks good, his skin healthy and fresh, hair neat, no bags under his eyes, and apparently Tess bought him some clothes or something because Paddy's never seen these before – a dark gray button-down shirt and black pants, black casual oxfords on his feet.

They're apparently his press-conference clothes, and now that conversation Tommy had with Frank about not wearing a suit and tie makes some sense. Paddy stands back and lets Frank Campana manage this, and Tommy's behavior is consistent with the way it's been with regards to the press all week. It's uneventful. Tommy turns aside a nosy question or two about his relationship with Brendan, and he answers a question about his court-martial with a short statement that he's regained his physical condition and is prepared to fight tomorrow.

Paddy goes to take a nap, and when he wakes there's all kinds of hubbub going on in the suite, Brendan and Tess and that little Kelly girl in there talking to Tommy and Frank. Paddy looks for signs that Kelly might be as interested in Tommy as he'd seemed to be in her, but there's nothing that really indicates something going on there. Paddy's actually disappointed. He likes her.

At dinner – at a nice restaurant down the street, Kelly is sitting next to Paddy, and she talks to him all evening while there's MMA conversation going on at the rest of the table. They talk about her kids and her job, and her brother in the Navy, and he asks to see that tattoo everybody was making a big deal over at the birthday party. It's small, on the inside of her wrist, and although he generally disapproves of tattoos on ladies, it's dainty enough and inconspicuous. She's a nice girl.

He watches again when they go back to the hotel, but Brendan and Tess and Kelly say goodnight in the hall outside their suite.

Tomorrow's Saturday, the first two rounds of matches. Twelve total. There'll be just the three fights on Sunday night to finish up. Would've made more sense to have done the prelims on Saturday, eight fights, and then the quarterfinals and semis on Sunday, six fights, and the final matchup on Labor Day itself. But then, Paddy's not in charge.

Saturday morning, Tommy's up early – Paddy still gets up early too, unable to let go of decades' worth of habit – and off for a very short run in the morning. When he's back and showered, Paddy's got room service breakfast ready: ham-mushroom omelet, whole wheat toast, oranges and melon. Coffee, of course. "Thanks, Pop," Tommy says. He's wearing another button-down shirt, this one in dark blue, and gray pants.

"You doin' an interview?" Paddy asks, tucking into his own breakfast and waving a hand at the outfit Tommy looks so handsome in.

"Nah. Just thought I'd look presentable, is all."

_'Cause Kelly's here_, is what occurs to Paddy. "ESPN's gonna be around, you doin' interviews?"

Tommy shakes his head. "Frank really wanted me to. But I kept tellin' him that I couldn't concentrate with a damn camera in my face, and he finally shut up about it." He looks up warily at Paddy. "I think Brendan's gonna do one, though. Maybe talk about us some. The family." The toast seems to stick in his throat, and he clears it. "You know, one of those feature things that goes like three minutes, and they broadcast 'em during breaks in the action? You should do it with him."

"_You_ should," Paddy tells him. "Maybe just sit next to 'im while he's talkin', show you're okay with each other."

Tommy shakes his head again. "I wouldn't mind answerin' a few questions. But I always get tired of it before he does, and I really hate the cameras."

"C'mon. You're doin' it. Lemme call Brendan." As soon as he's finished eating, Paddy's on the phone to Brendan, who seems to have just woken up, and they arrange it so that they'll all show up for the interview at nine. ESPN will talk to all of them, Paddy knows that, it's too good of a story for them to turn it down.

* * *

They spend the morning in the interview, and doing paperwork; they have lunch in their rooms, away from the media circus. After lunch everybody gets changed into the clothes they'll have on for the fights, and they go down in little groups and take separate vehicles to the event arena. Frank's off with Marco and Alex the intern, and Marco's family, but Brendan says he'll take care of everything for Tommy, so Paddy heads down to Tommy's dressing room with Brendan and the two ladies.

Brendan looks good too in his nice suit, and Paddy realizes he's got the same color blue shirt on as his son does. Brendan seems happy today. Well, why not? He's made enough money to be comfortable, and everybody loves him, and he's got his whole family around him.

The ESPN interview had gone well, the reporter guy talking to each one of them in turn, and sometimes together. Tommy doesn't talk much, which is only to be expected, and Paddy doesn't want to talk about anything that would direct the questioning to exactly how bad things were when his boys were growing up. Brendan is of course the most articulate of all of them, talking about his joy at reuniting with Tommy and rebuilding his relationship with his father, and Paddy sees his own pride reflected in Tommy's eyes when he looks at his big brother. There's a moment when the reporter asks, "What was it like, fighting your brother?" and Brendan loses his composure. He can't speak.

Tommy, surprising his father, answers. "There aren't any words for that. And I'd never do it again. But I think... I think maybe we had to? To get past all the crap. To remember that we _are _brothers." Brendan nods, still choked up, and Tommy chucks him on the arm, and Brendan chucks back, and then they both laugh.

Remembering that makes Paddy smile.

An hour or so before the start of the first-round afternoon fights, the official fight cards come down. Tommy's on the second one, along with a guy Paddy's never heard of, and Brendan says, "Well, I guess we'll let you alone to get ready. Little bro?" and when Tommy looks at him questioningly, he finishes with, "You know what to do. Nobody knows any better than you do. So go do it."

Tommy hugs him, not speaking, and everybody in the room gets a little misty. "That's enough of that," Tess says finally. "Let him get ready, Bren." And Brendan lets go, smiling. "Good luck, Tommy," Tess says as she kisses him on the cheek.

And then it's Kelly's turn, and Paddy's waiting for things to get warm in the room, trying not to be too obvious about watching. But she simply kisses him on the cheek the way Tess had, smiles, and turns to go.

"We're down front, close to the cage, so look for us when you come out. We'll see you later. Before the second round," Brendan says meaningfully. "Because I'm sure you'll be in it."

"Thanks," Tommy says, and those three turn for the door. "Hey, Nurse Kelly, can you look at this for a minute?" Tommy holds his left hand out to Kelly as everybody has started to file out, and she turns back.

"Sure." To Tess she says, "I'll catch up with you in a few minutes – you know people will be mobbing Brendan the second you get out there, it'll take you forever." Tess nods, and takes Brendan's arm as they go into the hall with Frank. Kelly takes Tommy's hand, and looks at it, even though it's all taped up and to Paddy's knowledge there's nothing wrong with it.

Tommy brings his hand up to her chin and their eyes lock, and it seems they've forgotten Paddy's over in the corner messing with supplies. Or maybe they don't care. "Thank you for bein' here," Tommy says to her quietly. "I know it's hard for you."

"You know, I'm doing okay with it," she says. "And it was important. 'Course, you _know _you owe me big, right?"

"Anything I got's yours, baby," Tommy says, and his voice is warm and amused. In the corner, Paddy gathers up the tape and scissors and puts them into the little metal toolbox, letting his lips stretch into a smile. He was right, there_ is_ something between them.

"I got a thing I need to say to you," she says, and Paddy moves closer to the toilet stall, out of their line of sight. He wonders if he should leave, but Tommy's never shy about telling him to get lost, so he stays put. "I know you're gonna do great. I still don't know anything about this fight stuff, but I know _you_, and I believe in you. Thing is, I don't care what happens in this tournament."

_Women,_ Paddy thinks, and shakes his head a little. _They don't get sports._

"Well, okay, I do care," she amends herself. "But I care because you care. Because you've put yourself on the line for this and put so much of yourself into getting ready for it. But no matter what happens out there, it doesn't change how I feel about you. Win or lose, you're my man. King of the hill, top dog, the champ. You are the Mac Daddy of the frickin' _world_, according to me. You got that?"

"Got it," Tommy says, voice husky, and when Paddy turns his head for a glimpse he sees how open and dark his son's eyes are, how unprotected Tommy is right now, and how – if she wanted – Kelly could walk out the door with his balls, he's practically handed 'em over to her.

One part of Paddy is thinking, _I shoulda told him that when he wrestled, 'stead of letting him think he had to win to make me happy _– but a bigger part of him is saying _You can only be the champ if you win, son_. He takes a deep breath. Maybe Tommy needs to hear both. Maybe he needs to know that winning is the way you earn respect, and he also needs to know that he's got love anyway. But what does Paddy know? He's an old Marine with busted knees and too much fondness for the bottle, and he was always better at hitting stuff than he was at loving people.

And then Kelly shows she's not one of those ball-busting broads, handing Tommy his balls back. "So you go out there and prove to everybody that you deserve to be here, you _deserve_ to win. _Go kick some ass_."

Generally speaking Paddy doesn't approve of women cussing, but in this case that was appropriate. He nods to himself. Tommy leans forward and kisses her. "Gotta go to work now, baby."

"See you later." Kelly reaches up and strokes her forefinger across his top lip, the beautiful mouth Tommy inherited from his mother. Then Kelly's gone, and Tommy sighs.

Paddy washes his hands while Tommy gets out the jump rope and starts warming up. Frank's supposed to come in and talk to them in a little while, after he's got his other fighter going. Paddy's just the physical conditioning trainer here, not the coach. He won't be in the cage as corner or cutman, either. Actually, the way Frank has this set up, there's not much reason for Paddy to be here at all. He's wondering whether to say something about Kelly when Tommy speaks. "Rather you not say anything to Brendan or Tess about that, Pop. They don't know yet."

That's a surprise. Paddy would have thought Tess had engineered the whole thing anyway, Kelly's her friend. "I won't tell 'em anything. Would've thought they'd be pleased about it, though. I sure am."

"I dunno about Tess. But I do know Brendan'll blow a gasket and I don't want that happening till the tournament's over. He don't think I'm good enough for her."

"I wonder why you care more about what your brother thinks than about what I think." Paddy, stung by further evidence that he's unnecessary, lets it out without really intending to.

Tommy, jumping rope barefoot on the mat, turns his head to stare at Paddy. It is not a warm look; it's Tommy at his most malevolent. For just one second, Paddy thinks it's good that Tommy can still find his anger, what with all the mushy-gushy stuff that went on in this room five minutes ago. "I wonder that you wonder," Tommy says, softly, with the same flat bitterness he'd shown Paddy two years ago, showing up at his house after years of silent absence. "Brendan's got almost fifteen years' worth of successful marriage under his belt, and you wonder why what he thinks matters to me? What do _you _got, Pop?"

Paddy's heart sinks again. It's not just _father_ he's failed at, it's _husband_ too. And he'll never get a chance to fix that with Mary Rose, not till he gets to heaven to beg her forgiveness.

"I mean, in the Paddy Conlon almanac of 'How to Treat Women,' step one is name-calling and step two is the open-handed face slap. I could probably list the following twenty-three steps without blinkin', Pop. My memory's good enough. You want me to?" He hasn't stopped jumping rope, and he hasn't even broken a sweat yet.

"_Tommy,_" Paddy pleads. This is out of nowhere, Tommy's rage after all that softness with the girl.

"I mean, from spittin' in her face to screwin' around, to holding her hair with one hand and punching her jaw with the other... half of 'em lead to the ER and all of 'em lead to tears. Whatever Brendan learned about bein' a husband, it sure as hell didn't come from you. Tess still looks at him like he's her Prince Charming. They're _happy_."

Paddy's knees don't want to work right. He sinks onto the little table and tries not to see the past. Much of it he doesn't remember – such is the influence of whiskey – but there are a handful of scenes burned into this brain: his wife's hand over her bruised eye and her mouth stretched into a wail, and the two boys behind her, Brendan's face grim and wary and Tommy's full of fearful, shocked, silent reproach.

His wife spitting a tooth into a handkerchief already red with blood. His wife walking like a woman three times her age, after a night's session of fists and angry sex. His wife sobbing over a lipstick mark on the collar of his shirt, one she didn't put there herself. His wife stepping between him and one of the boys, turning his anger her way.

No, not "his wife." Mary Rose. A person, not just a role. He'd loved her. He'd loved her and craved her approval so badly that when she didn't show it – when he didn't _deserve_ her approval – he'd blamed _her_.

Paddy's overwhelmed with a rush of shame so intense that tears come to his eyes and he tries to hide them. He's confessed these sins before, with true remorse and the intent to never ever commit them again, but it hurts to know how badly his treatment of their mother warped the children too. Brendan seems to have seen his father's piss-poor example and run the other direction from it, but sensitive little Tommy so angry now... what harm Paddy's done to his little boy. "_Forgive me_," he whispers silently to God, and to Mary Rose.

Tommy heaves a sigh so loud that Paddy looks up through his wet eyes to see that the jump rope is still. "Look. Pop." He's biting his lip, and then he tries again. "I didn't mean – I just don't wanna talk about this no more, okay? But I won't take advice from you on women."

Paddy nods. He tries to rise from the table but he can't just yet, his knees won't cooperate.

"Pop. I'm sorry."

"You're angry and you have every right to be," Paddy hears himself say.

"I know. Pop – "

"I'm gonna take a break, get some ice." Paddy manages to get up and go to the door. He meets Frank in the hallway. "I'll be back." He walks, very slowly because he still feels shaky, down to the big icemaker and fills up a couple of bags. There's still half an hour before the fight starts, and Tommy's got the second card, so there's plenty of time, but he wants to get the tub iced down and full before he needs it. It takes him fifteen minutes because he's not hurrying, and when he comes back in Tommy's warming up with Frank.

The ice bath is nearly full by the time he hears Tommy say something to Frank and the smack of fists on pads stops. Tommy walks over to Paddy. "You gettin' that ready? Thanks." Paddy just looks at him. There's a muscle twitching in Tommy's cheek and he seems on edge. "Look, I'm still mad about it. I'll probably still be mad when I die. She deserved so much better. But you're sorry, I can see that. For all the good that does. So I shouldn'tve hit you with it so hard, and I'm sorry."

Paddy nods. Clears his throat. "About time for you to go to work, son."

Tommy nods back. He goes back to Frank and listens, hits the pads a little more, and then he's on his back with his feet up against the shower wall like usual, arms spread out. Paddy thinks of this as Tommy's way of coiling himself up inside like a spring, letting his muscles relax and his will clench itself. When he looks away from Tommy, Frank is standing there with hands on hips, looking at him like he's trying to figure Paddy out. Paddy pulls his head back in surprise, but just then the door opens and a fight official sticks his head in. "Five minutes, Frank."

"Thanks," Frank says. Tommy hops up from the floor, and Paddy doesn't like the look of his eyes right now. He looks like an animal. It seems Frank doesn't like the look of him either. "Whoa. Tommy." Frank steps close to his fighter and rests his hands on Tommy's shoulders, gripping hard. "Dial it back, okay? Don't go out reacting, go thinking. You got me?"

"I'm thinkin'," Tommy responds.

"People are expecting you to be One-Punch Tommy Riordan. You gonna give them that, or something more sophisticated?"

"I'll fight him however seems best," Tommy says, and his voice is calm but it's that storm of bitter feeling underneath, the voice Paddy is beginning to know as Tommy's angriest. He's suddenly sorry for Tommy's opponent, never mind that the guy is three inches taller and reportedly has a wicked kick. Tommy pulls his hood up over his head, over that jarhead haircut that looks so odd set on top of his bulked-up shoulders, and Paddy wonders again what his son had been like behind a big gun in the desert. "Let's go."

The announcer starts building up, and under that is the sound of some of that rap crap Tommy likes, some guy screaming over drums, and then the crowd is screaming too. This always makes Paddy nervous, the noise, and he hunches his shoulders up a little to regain control of his body. Tommy's bouncing a little on his toes, he notices, as the official checks him for mouthguard and cup, and then he runs up and into the cage, bounding around it to get a feel for it under his feet. Finds his corner and sticks there. The other guy's in the cage already, a tall black guy named Jared "Killer" Killen. Killen's wearing a sneer and trunks in a paint-splatter pattern of neon green on black. Tommy's in red with red gloves, and from this distance his eyes are like holes into hell.

Paddy shivers a little. It's still the noise, mostly, but some of it is Tommy's anger, arising out of the blue to possess him.

He looks around, trying to find Brendan. Sees those two announcers back at the table with their headsets and microphones; they're talking but of course live you can't hear them. The TV back in the dressing room – and the one in the hotel suite – is set to DVR all of the ESPN coverage so that Frank can watch it later, fast-forwarding through the pieces he doesn't need to see.

Aha, there. Brendan's not as far away from him as he'd thought – he's down front, probably fancy tickets as a perk for the returning belt-holder from the first Sparta. And there's Tess in her plum-colored sparkly cocktail dress, and Kelly in her red top and the kind of jeans that cling to a girl's body. Skinny jeans, they call 'em, maybe? Paddy doesn't keep up with fashion trends, but he did notice how her jeans fit because she's got such a nice broad can. (Forty-five years of noticing women's bodies doesn't go away, even if he does remind himself to be respectful of a girl who might someday be his daughter-in-law.) And that red top. He shakes his head. It's not quite immodest, but it is attention-getting because she fills it out so nicely.

Poor Kelly looks nervous, and Tess is hugging her shoulders. Paddy makes himself relax, Tommy looks mad enough to bite nails in two and God only knows what will happen. The ref calls the fighters in for their instructions, sends them back, and then it's "Let's go to war!"

Killen comes out looking for an opportunity for one of his big brutal kicks, throwing his arms at Tommy's shoulders. He's got a longer reach than Tommy, and what Paddy would like Tommy to do would be to take this guy down to the mat and wrestle the breath out of him. Instead, Tommy takes a couple of punches to the shoulder and one to the temple, and when Killen kicks out at him he simply grabs Killen's foot, sweeps the other leg, lands squarely on the guy's abdomen and starts punching his face. It's very much like before, one of his Sparta matches from the other year, though Paddy can't remember which one, and he starts worrying. _Tommy's so angry._

Killen tries twisting away from Tommy, but apparently he can't get enough breath because of how Tommy's got him pinned down. Diaphragm can't move to allow the lungs to expand, maybe.

Tommy's landed several punches on Killen's arms and several on his face, and finally Killen taps. The ref sees it, and so does Tommy, and the hitting stops immediately, Tommy hopping up off the taller guy and onto his feet. Killen's chest heaves and he sucks air like it's going out of style, but the ref's already sent Tommy to his corner to wait for the official announcement. Frank is talking earnestly and passionately through the cage to Tommy, who's wiping his face with a towel and nodding. He doesn't look happy, but he's not the prowling tiger he was a few years ago, either. He's still in the cage, still playing by the rules, and the ref hadn't had to pull him off his opponent while he was still throwing fists. He's in control of himself.

While Paddy's watching, Tommy's shoulders relax and he rolls his head around on his neck, stretching it. His face gets calmer, and that frightening darkness in his gaze has gone too. Frank says one more thing to Tommy, very forcefully, and Tommy nods, looking a little chagrined now. He turns back to the ref, who's beckoning him back to the center of the cage, and lets the ref raise his arm as winner.

That over, Tommy reaches over to shake Killen's hand and say something. Killen gives him a rueful smile and Tommy steps back to let Killen leave the cage first, while he waves to Brendan and Tess and Kelly.

Paddy follows Tommy and Frank back to the dressing room area, at a distance so he won't provoke anything. When he comes in, Tommy's insisting, "No reporters, no interviews," to Frank while pulling tape off his hands. There's a red mark on his upper thigh that will probably turn into a bruise, and Paddy can't remember seeing him take a hit there. Maybe he should be wearing his glasses all the time, not just for reading. Tommy strips down and steps into the ice bath, sinking down so his shoulders will be under and closing his eyes. Frank rolls up a towel and sticks it behind Tommy's neck, and holds an ice pack to the place where Tommy took a shot to the temple. "I can do that," Tommy says, starting to reach for it.

"You sit," Frank says forcefully. "And then you're gonna tell me what the hell is going on in your head, because that was sloppy fighting from you. I haven't seen you fight that dumb since the first time you sparred at my gym."

"I won, didn't I?" Tommy still hasn't opened his eyes.

"Yes. But it was bone-headed. Killen was maybe the most marginal entrant into the tournament – he's a one-trick pony with those kicks. If you'd drawn anybody else, you woulda played right into their expectations, and you'd have been out."

Paddy never rehashed fights with Tommy when he was his trainer-manager, and he's not sure he sees the point. What's done is done, and Tommy probably won't ever face Killen again, even if Tommy keeps fighting after this tournament.

"Tommy. Talk to me." Frank takes the ice pack away from Tommy's face, and Tommy opens his eyes, face perfectly blank. He says nothing. "Will you talk to Brendan then?" Tommy blinks and exhales hard, but before he answers, Frank's cell phone chirps. He pulls it out to read the message, and his eyebrows go up. "Kelly says you should call Kevin." Frank looks at Tommy. "That's your counselor, right?"

Tommy's face has relaxed into something not quite a smile. "Yep. And she's right, I should talk to him. I'll do it as soon as I'm dressed. But Frank, I'm serious – no reporters. If you want me to focus and let all the extra stuff go, that means I don't need to see nobody who wants to ask me nosy questions about the past, okay?"

Frank sighs and puts the ice pack back to Tommy's temple. "Okay, deal. You talk to Kevin and straighten the tangle out, and I will keep ESPN and all the other guys outta here. And thanks for reminding me that I shouldn't give conflicting advice."

This time Tommy does smile. "No problem, Coach." He closes his eyes again and relaxes.

Frank punches buttons on his phone one-handed while holding the ice pack. Tommy is somewhere else mentally. Paddy has nothing to do. He sighs without meaning to, staring at his hands. These are the same hands he's had all his life, the ones that fired his M16, the ones that could make a woman open up for him, the ones that handled heavy machinery at the mill and held his baby sons. The ones that he's used as weapons.

Right now they're empty.

And his son is calling somebody else "coach." After everything else, it's surprising how much that one little thing hurts. His secret fear has always been that he doesn't matter, he has no purpose, he is negligible. Useless.

There is silence in the dressing room for a good ten minutes, and then Frank moves to check his watch. "I need to go hang with Marco for awhile, he's got the seventh card," he says. They all know that, it's not a problem. It's pretty ambitious of Frank to have two fighters here, and it's ostensibly why Paddy and that college boy Alex are along for the ride.

But Paddy's sure, now, that he's the reason for Tommy's anger. He should leave; he just can't make himself do it.

Frank says he'll catch up with them later, and Tommy should get some rest before the second set of matches this evening, if he can. Tommy nods. When the door closes behind Frank, Tommy speaks without opening his eyes. "Pop."

"You want me outta here."

Tommy turns his head and looks at him. "I think I know what Kevin's gonna tell me. And I think if you stick around real close we're gonna get into it again, you and me. It's not that I want you gone. I just – Frank's right, I can't fight pissed-off all the time."

"I'll... go – " do _what?_ What _is_ Paddy going to do, if Tommy needs him to be gone?

"Don't go nowhere, Pop. I got a job for you." Paddy cocks his head and raises his eyebrows. "Take care of Kelly for me while the fights are goin' on, willya? She's nervous about bein' here, and she has flashbacks. Explain to her what's happening, keep her aware of her surroundings if she starts starin' off into space. Hold her hand or put your arm around her, give her your handkerchief if she cries. Tell her I'll be fine."

Paddy blinks. Taking care of somebody, it's not the kind of thing he's good at, and Tommy knows that.

"Be _real _gentle, Pop. Treat her like you would Rosie and Emily."

Well, maybe he _can_ do that. He nods. "Yeah, okay." Tommy holds his gaze a moment longer, those changeable eyes of his blue-gray in this light, and Paddy realizes this is very important to his son, that he's being entrusted with a sensitive mission. "I'll treat her like she's a delicate flower."

Tommy smiles. Not at him, though, it's because he's thinking of his girl. "She ain't all that delicate. She's just been hurt pretty bad, and she's gettin' better. Just needs a crutch until she can stand on her own little size-six feet."

"So I'm the crutch, huh?"

"You want an opportunity to be a good dad, hop to it. And don't let me down." The words Tommy doesn't say,_ this time_, ring in the air between them.

"Yeah, I copy," Paddy says, and "You wanna hand gettin' outta there?"

"Yep." And Tommy steadies himself on his dad's shoulder until he's out of the ice bath, skin red from cold and all his tattoos standing out. Paddy should ask him about them sometime, if they can ever manage a civil conversation again.

"You want your brother?" Paddy asks as Tommy's drying off. "I mean – "

"Yeah, see if he'll come down before the second round, okay? I'm gonna call Kevin and then take a nap on that mat. Probably go back to the hotel for dinner, right?"

"All right." Paddy knows where Brendan's fancy ringside seats are; he can go sit with them for awhile. "Tom? Thank you."

"Thanks for doin' it." Tommy pulls his track pants up and reaches over to chuck his dad on the bicep. Coming from Tommy, that feels like affection. Paddy straightens his shoulders and throws his chest out as he goes through the door, a man with a purpose**.**

**A/N: I hope you noticed that little bit about Tommy hating cameras... because we have all seen the photos, and the truth is that Tom Hardy _looooooves_ the cameras. ;) (And they love him back. Because, really, how could they not?)**


	50. Chapter 50: Sparta Begins, Part II

**Ch 50: Sparta Begins, Part II**

**This was originally part of Ch 49, and when I hit upwards of 12K words with more to go, I began to see reason and split it up. Whoops. Just like last chapter, this one's got some descriptions of violence (cage only this time, though), plus some lemons. Mmmm.**

After Tommy's first fight, Kelly says she'd like to get out of the arena for awhile, and since Tess' feet are pinched in her dark-pink Carven pumps with the suede ankle-strap bow (she really should get used to wearing heels more often), she says she'll go back to the hotel suite with Kelly. She kisses Brendan's cheek, which he barely notices because he's in conversation with some guy on his other side about how Tommy's got a good shot at this thing, and she hooks her arm in Kelly's as they make their way to the exit.

"Think he's okay?" Kelly says as they enter the lobby. They're both walking slower than usual because of their heels – Tess had taken her shopping at the Barneys downtown in Philly last week, and insisted on buying her this sexy pair of Loeffler Randall black sandals with ankle straps and little strips of leather across the instep, on three-inch kitten heels. They'd been on clearance, probably last year's design, but Tess doesn't care. They're gorgeous.

"Tommy? Seemed okay to me. Maybe a little tense at the start, but he was calm enough afterward, don't you think?"

Kelly shakes her head. "No, something's wrong. He was upset when he came out." She stops walking. "Wait a minute, I'm going to text Frank."

"I'll get a cab," Tess says, and steps out to hail one. She has to walk carefully. She loves this dress, but it's not exactly easy to walk in. Tess had bought this dress last week, an orchid color sheath dress with sequins at the neckline, plus another cocktail dress, a black one with sheer lace at the shoulders, that she's saving for tomorrow. Even if Tommy doesn't get through to the Sunday rounds (she thinks he will), Brendan will have to be here for the close of the tournament as a prior winner so she'll need to be dressed up anyway. And Brendan looks so good in his navy suit, too... she spares a moment to think about her husband_ out _of that navy suit, and sighs.

The cab pulls up about the time Kelly walks out to join Tess, stowing her cell phone in her purse. It's only two blocks to the hotel, but neither one of them wants to hoof it in this crowd, in this heat, in these _shoes_.

The minute they get out and Tess pays the cabbie, Kelly has her cell phone out reading a message. They walk into the hotel, and Kelly says, "I was right. Frank says Tommy's agreed to call Kevin and talk to him about whatever it is, so I feel better about that anyway."

Once inside their suite, Tess opens the mini-bar and gets out the chilled vodka and orange juice for herself, plus the gin and the Rose's lime juice for Kelly. "Screwdriver for me, Tom Collins for you," she says. "You look a little ragged. Are you sure you're okay to be here?"

Kelly nods. She looks down at her feet in satisfaction. "I_ adore_ these shoes," she says. "You'll have to quit buying me fabulous shoes, unless you want to get sick of hearing me say that phrase."

"Maybe you can buy your own fabulous shoes," Tess says. "I mean, someday."

"Not on my budget," Kelly says, and laughs. "And thank you for the manicure-pedicure, as well. I've really missed spending time with you."

"I've missed that, too," Tess says, and hands Kelly her drink. "At least now I have a collection of nail polish and we can do stuff other than the cheapie pink glitter Emily likes. I love that Essie Lollipop on you. Perfect red for your skin."

"Thanks. I like yours."

Tess has silver nail polish on – she's never worn silver and at first she thought it would be strange, but now she likes it. "Drink up," Tess says. "And let's go watch the DVR of Tommy's fight." She finishes mixing her own drink, and sits down on the couch with the remote.

Kelly admires her own feet again. "God, I love these shoes! I love this polish on my toes in these shoes."

"Are you having fun here, really? Because I know Brendan was worried about you."

"Yes, really. I'm doing so much better with the flashback thing. The serious counseling has helped so much."

Tess finds the beginning of the segment and hits Play. There are the two ESPN fight commentators, Sam Sheridan and Bryan Callen, talking about Jared Killen and his record on the Amateur MMA circuit. "I just don't think he's ready, Sam. He looks good, he's clearly been training well, but look who he's drawn in this first fight. I just don't see him taking down the Mean Marine."

"Well, you have to understand that Tommy Riordan – sorry, Tommy _Conlon_, he's fighting under his real name now – spent a little over a year in military prison. You don't keep up your physical condition under those circumstances, and after that brutal shoulder dislocation in the first Sparta – "

"When he was fighting his brother," Callen interjects.

"Yes, when Brendan Conlon the underdog surprised us all and outlasted everybody else. My point is, nobody has seen Tommy Conlon fight since he got out of Leavenworth, and we'll just have to see whether he has actually recovered well from that injury and whether he's capable of fighting on this level again."

"Well, I beg to differ on that point of nobody having seen Tommy Conlon fight. He tore Mad Dog Grimes all to pieces in his gym in Pittsburgh back in the spring – "

Sheridan interrupts. "That Internet video may have been faked for publicity purposes, and it's crappy quality anyway."

" – and it got him kicked out of Colt's Gym, Colt Boyd being Grimes' manager, so I think it's gotta be legit. Conlon looks brutal in it, and I think honestly _that's_ the matchup I'd like to see later on in the tournament, Conlon facing Grimes again. Besides, I've also seen some footage of an independent MMA fight in Philly last month in which a guy looking a whole lot like Conlon causes mayhem in the place under the name of, get this, Casey Finnegan. Hard to fake the body shape and the tattoos, Sam, I think it's him."

"Well, I don't know. What we _do _know, what's _official_, is that Conlon has spent the past five months or so training under Frank Campana, who trained his brother Brendan for the first Sparta, and Tommy Conlon has been living with his brother in Philly since very shortly after he got out of prison. What I will say, Bryan, is that since he's been trained by Campana, and if he has recovered his condition, then Tommy Conlon may be a serious contender for this title. Let's watch and see how it goes."

They say more about the specifics of the fight as it goes on, but the general consensus of it is, Tommy Riordan's back, and he's back to win.

"I don't like them calling him 'Riordan'," Kelly says thoughtfully.

"I know. Like he isn't a different person," Tess says. "At least they didn't show tape of him fighting Brendan. That was bad enough the first time."

Kelly sighs. "I haven't watched that," she confesses, and Tess advises her not to, the emotion in it is so intense she can't stand to watch it again herself.

They check in on the rest of the first-round fights. Some of the names Tess recognizes: Midnight Le, Diego Santana, Mad Dog Grimes, Francisco Barbosa. Some she doesn't. Marco Santos has unfortunately had to tap out of a vicious ankle lock in his match, so he's out already. There's a break after the first set of fights, and then the second round will start at 8 pm.

Brendan is back within a little while, and the three of them tuck in to Caesar salads and the hotel's specialty crab cakes via room service, splitting a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Tess tucks one hand into Brendan's pocket and pats his leg through it, earning her a sidelong stare from him. As if he doesn't know what she's doing. If Kelly weren't here right now, she'd have that suit off him already for a little private time before the second rounds start. The fights always excite her anyway, but the fights plus Brendan dressed so well... mmm. She's formulating a plan. She blows him a silent kiss.

Kelly finishes her last bite of crab cake and stands up. "I think I might go rest for awhile," she says. "Before we go back. Half an hour, you think?" she says, and winks at Tess. So Tess knows that Kelly knows what Tess has in mind for Brendan, and she smiles at her friend. Kelly goes into her room and turns some music on in there, so Tess turns lightning-quick to Brendan and hops into his lap to kiss him. Within a moment or two, they're in their room, and Tess takes off her pretty silver lace underwear along with her shoes.

"Come on, you magnificent animal," she says to Brendan, and leans back on her elbows on the bed. "You know you want me."

Yes, he absolutely does. She can see the ridge of his erection already through his pants, and the flush of desire across his cheekbones. "Think so?" he says to her. "'Fess up, it's the suit. You love me in the suit."

"I _love_ you in the suit," she says, and hikes her dress up higher. "You look powerful in the suit. I wanna fuck your brains out in the suit."

He loosens the tie but doesn't take it off, and then his mouth spreads into a devilish grin. "So maybe I leave the suit on, huh? Kinda naughty. You want to leave your dress on too?"

"Oh, the dress slips off easy," she tells him. "If you like."

"Yeah," he says, unbuckling his belt. "Dress off. Suit on. We're gonna get nasty in that chair over there, right after I go down on you."

The thought hits her right in her center, and she can almost feel herself get wetter. "Sexy talk from an old married guy." She pulls the dress up over her head, snaps open her bra and lets it fall, completely naked.

"Said the MILF," he says to her, and kneels down by the bed. Spreads her legs wider apart, and licks that sensitive part of her body until she's biting her hand to keep from screaming. "C'mon, babe, let's go to the chair." He pulls her up and off the bed, sits in the upholstered chair, and pulls her down onto his hard length, sinking into her as she slides down on his body.

"God, that's really good," she whispers. "You should wear a suit more often."

"Guess I should," he whispers back, holding on to her hips. "Faster, honey."

He hadn't really needed to tell her that, because looking at him in blue shirt and gray tie and navy jacket, feeling him hot and rigid inside her, is making her insane, and she just wants to ride him like a horse, fast and hard, not caring what it looks like or whether it is proper. It isn't proper, and that's turning her on too, the proper suit and her nakedness, and the fact that they're screwing each other in a chair in their hotel room with the windows open. But Tess wants it even raunchier, just because she loves him and he's such a good guy, and he deserves a thrill every now and then.

She moves off and turns around, facing his legs, and lowers herself back down onto his body, ignoring his "What are you doing?" query and looking over her shoulder at him.

"Reverse cowgirl," she says to him. "It was in Cosmo. I read it in the grocery store line."

"You are _kidding_," he says to her, and then she starts to move. "Goddamn, that's good," he says before he stops talking altogether. And so does she, because it feels awesome.

"Pull my hair," she whispers back over her shoulder. "Not hard enough to hurt, but enough that I know you mean don't stop."

He whispers "Okay," back, and takes a hank of her hair into his hand. Tugs a little, enough to make her arch her back. Which feels amazing. "Like this?"

"Oh God yes." She starts to move faster, wilder, and within a few minutes she's coming so hard she can see stars. But he's still got a good hold of her hair, so she assumes that means _don't stop_, so she keeps going. She reaches down to touch herself while she's rocking on his body, and she comes again, about the time that his grip on her hair gets uncomfortable and she feels his hips arch up underneath her, his breath ragged on her neck.

She slows, finally, and tips her head back to let her hair fall down her bare back. "Mmm. That was a good article. I should get into the slow line more often."

"Man, that is the most fun I've _ever_ had in a suit," he says, and kisses her back. "Usually it's weddings and funerals and teachers' meetings, not great sex. Gotta wear that suit again."

"It wasn't completely on you," she points out, teasing a little. "The pants were pushed down." She goes into the bathroom to wash up a little and get dressed again.

"Still. Where'd you get that idea, as if I didn't know?" He comes to the door of the bathroom and watches her brush her hair as he straightens his tie. "You have got some serious sex vixen hair there, Tess."

"Well, you had your hands in it. You know the fights get to me," she admits.

"Thought it was _me_ gettin' to you," he says, tucking his shirt in and refastening his belt.

"It _is._ It's _still_ you. Because I watch them fighting and I remember you in there, and then I can't keep my panties up."

"Huh. Used to be that football games got to you, and basketball games, and wrestling..." He's teasing her now. "Back before we even started having sex, way way back when."

"Shut up, babe. It's always been you, and you know it."

"Think Kelly knows?"

"What we were up to? I'd bet on it." Then they come back into the suite, and Tess sees that Kelly's ditched her jeans in favor of a black pencil skirt that clings to her hips and comes to the top of her knee.

"I like those jeans, but I wanted to dress up a little more," she explains. On anybody else, that skirt would be a mini, but not on Kelly. It does look cute, though.

They make their way back to the arena, and find their seats again, and this time Paddy's there. "Your brother wants you," he says to Brendan. "If you don't mind."

Brendan looks surprised. "Thought he'd want _you_. But yeah, I'll go back." He pats the all-access pass he's got on a lanyard around his neck, and winks at his dad. "Take care of my girls, Pop."

"Will do." Paddy nods.

So Brendan heads off, and Paddy joins Tess and Kelly, choosing to sit beside Kelly, which just amuses Tess no end because of the way he's talking to her so softly. Almost like he talks to his granddaughters, without the Barbie and sequined wand angle. Alex the intern comes and joins them too, saying that he doesn't have anything to do because Tommy wanted Brendan with him, and Marco was too bummed at losing in the first round to come watch the rest. "He'll be okay tomorrow, I think," Alex says. "Just didn't want to face the reporters and stuff, you know?" Tess nods. She remembers years of Brendan's disappointment at losing a match that had mattered to him.

The first round has Pete Grimes battering the heck out of his opponent, whose name Tess doesn't remember, and he stalks out of the cage looking grimly triumphant. Well, just _damn_. Tess hates the guy. He's been a jerk for practically forever. On the other hand, it's probably why he's a good fighter. Again, Tommy's the second card of this round, paired up against a guy named Anthony Veloso, a Muay Thai expert who's pretty famous for that technique of locking his hands behind his opponent's head and kneeing him into submission. That's a move Tommy can pull, too, so this ought to be interesting.

When Tommy comes in, in a fresh pair of red shorts and red-and-blue gloves, he looks considerably calmer than he had earlier in the day, and Tess glances over to get Kelly's reaction. Kelly's biting her lower lip and her hands are balled up, gaze intent. She doesn't look anxious or concerned, but a bit on edge. "You okay?" Tess asks, suddenly worried, but Kelly turns to her and smiles.

"Yeah. It's just... exciting, you know? He looks _much_ better. Whatever was bugging him seems to be gone."

Tess nods, and suddenly she recognizes that expression on Kelly's face, it's the same sort of thrill Brendan had been teasing her about a little while ago. She flashes back to months ago, Kelly accidentally calling Tommy a "sexy tattooed bad boy," and she almost laughs. Yep. Kelly's got the fighter's-girl bug now. And even though Tommy seems to already have a girl judging by the late-night phone conversations, there's no sign of her now. Tess will have to keep Kelly out of the dressing room. She knows from experience how easy it is to pull up a skirt after a fight, how easy it is to lean over a table or a stool or lie back on the practice mat. And it never takes long, the testosterone's already running so high. She wipes the smirk off her face, and then the excitement hits her again as the fight starts.

Right off the bat, Veloso's trying his signature clinch-and-strike move on Tommy, but Tommy's got longer arms, and he's fending Veloso off with well-placed punches. If Tess were coaching Tommy, she'd recommend that Tommy play off his comparative strength in wrestling and go for the takedown – which is exactly what Tommy does in the next two minutes, as soon as he gets the chance. There's some scuffling around on the mat, Tommy gets a leg hold on Veloso, and then the round ends. When Veloso gets up he's got a very slight limp, and Tommy's eyes are bright the way a hunting cat's are. Frank and Brendan are over in the corner with Tommy, giving him water and talking to him, but Tommy's eyes never leave Veloso, and he's nodding almost absently at Frank.

The second round seems to go faster. Right away Veloso starts with classic Muay Thai kicks and elbow strikes, and there's some dancing around while Tommy matches them. But then Tommy sweeps Veloso's knee with a kick and takes him down to the mat, locking Veloso's right arm into an unbearably-painful-looking arm hold. Veloso almost makes it to the end of the second round, but he taps out like Killen had, knowing he's beaten.

Tommy leaps up, and this time he's smiling, actually grinning so big Tess can see his blue mouthguard. He throws a fist up into the air, and then reaches over to help Veloso up and shake his hand.

Tess grabs Kelly and shakes her in her excitement, and then she grabs Paddy too, and then poor Alex, and it's only when Kelly yells in her ear to please stop screaming that she even knows she's doing it. But she's just so happy, she's so _happy _for Tommy, that he's gotten one step further and he's done it without that rage that characterized his previous Sparta appearance.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur for Tess, from the other two matches – both heavy on the matwork – to the interviews afterward, where Tommy calmly credits his athletic trainer (Paddy), his coach (Frank), his teammate (Marco), his adviser (Brendan), and his wrestling background with giving him the skills to take down Anthony Veloso. He even manages to compliment Veloso's toughness, which Tess thinks is a classy move, and then he also mentions the benefit of having worked with Lou Pallotta and "Steve's Girls" at Russo's Gym. So then he has to explain how having helped train a bunch of girls assisted in honing his skills, in that he really looked at the way to take down a more physically imposing opponent.

When they watch the interview later on TV, Tommy comes across as being intelligent, straightforward and confident in his own abilities. Which is the way Tess sees him now. His opponents should get that message too, and be wary of him, she thinks.

And then they go down to the hotel restaurant for a late dinner, all of them except Marco and his family. He's congratulated Tommy in private, but it seems he just isn't up to sitting around the table with them and watch someone else's celebration. The meal is lovely – a small steak and baked potato and steamed veggies for Tommy, tapas and wine for the rest of them. Tess makes sure Kelly's seated between herself and Paddy, but she notices Tommy's eyes on Kelly often. Well, that red satin top does rather put the goods on display; she's caught Alex staring at Kelly's cleavage as well.

There is warm chatter and congratulation, and some discussion of the potential matches for tomorrow. It's generally acknowledged that the four guys who'll be moving on are worthy of it and there were no flukes or major upsets today. At some point, Frank checks his watch and says that he and Tommy ought to be getting upstairs to bed soon.

The fights don't start tomorrow until 7pm, the semifinals limited to five rounds of three minutes each and the championship round five rounds of five minutes each, starting at about 9:15. Whoever goes first will have the advantage of 20 or maybe 25 minutes' extra rest, depending on how long the second match goes, but that's just the luck of the draw. You get what you get.

So even though the fights don't start until later, Frank's right that Tommy needs his rest. The group moves out of the restaurant and toward the elevators, and it's only when they're standing there waiting that Tess notices Mad Dog Grimes and his posse joining them in the elevator area. Tommy seems to be ignoring him, nodding only to a quiet, friendly-looking Asian man in Grimes' group.

"You know, you looked really good in your interviews," Kelly says to Tommy, and straightens the collar of his shirt. She's serious, not flirty, but Tess sees the way Tommy's blinking slow and drawing in his breath at Kelly up close. "When you're not scowling, that is." She smiles up at him, teasing, and he smiles back.

And then Mad Dog Grimes proves that he is a stupendous jerk, saying out loud to Tommy across five feet of hotel carpet, "That your piece of midget ass, Riordan? Whaddya do, stand her on a stool when you fuck her?"

Tess' jaw drops at the completely unwarranted vulgarity of it, the incredible insult to Kelly, but the change in Tommy is total and instantaneous, just as if a switch has been flipped. He's a predatory animal, a killing machine, and he looks twice as big as he did three seconds ago, his eyes like war wounds. He steps across that five feet of hotel carpet, right up into Grimes' face, and says, in a very quiet voice, "Watch your mouth, _Dog_, that's a lady."

"Oh, she _is _your whore?" Grimes says right back, and Tess is suddenly terrified that these two will get into it, right here in the hotel. Which would get them both kicked out of the tournament, probably, and maybe that's why Grimes would say such a thing, either that or he's unbelievably stupid.

"Come on, Pete, knock it off," the friendly-looking guy says, stepping close, and now Tess can see he doesn't look friendly anymore, he looks appalled. "That's a nice girl, no need to be nasty."

Mad Dog doesn't move. Tommy doesn't move. They're still right in each other's faces.

And then Brendan moves from behind Tess, putting himself right behind Tommy. "That," he says, also quietly but very distinctly, "is my wife's friend. Her name is Ms. Doherty, and I suggest that you call her that if you ever speak of her again. Because if any other name for her comes out of your mouth,_ I will knock your teeth down it._"

Grimes sneers. His manager, standing to his side, keeps watching him and Tommy, can't seem to look away, but doesn't stop them, either, and Frank's watching, arms crossed and eyebrows raised as if he's waiting for the children to stop playing stupid games.

"He'd have to come through me first," Tommy says, turning his chin slightly so they can all see he's talking to Brendan. "And he ain't _gettin' _through me."

"Like you could take me now," Mad Dog says, loud and sarcastic.

"Damn fucking straight I can," Tommy says. Deadly. Quiet. Matter-of-fact.

Frank sighs impatiently. "Save it for the cage, boys. Tommy, let's go." He reaches over and grabs Tommy's arm, pulling him away. As he does, Brendan gets up in Grimes' face, just as Tommy had done, and makes this odd tongue-clicking noise before he, too, backs off. Paddy and Alex have been holding an elevator for them all, and Tess seizes Kelly's hand to pull her into it without any further incident.

The doors close, finally, and Tommy turns to Kelly. "You okay?"

She nods. She looks shaken, but the color's already coming back to her face. "I'm fine. You didn't need to do that, it was just words."

"Words _matter_," Tommy says intensely, leaning toward her a little.

"Yes. But those weren't directed at me, they were directed at _you_. That was him getting to you, and I was just wallpaper to him. If Mike had said that, or my stepfather, I might be a wreck. But that guy? I don't know him. I don't give a damn what he thinks. You need to let these things go," Kelly says firmly.

Tess would agree. It was unimportant. But Brendan puts a hand on Kelly's shoulder. "No, Kelly, you can't let those things go. Not in this situation, among these people."

"That's right," Frank says.

"Letting it go would be seen as a weakness. Only Frank, or Colt Boyd, somebody with authority over those guys, could have broken that up without somebody losing face."

Kelly blinks. "Why?"

"Guy code," Frank explains as the elevator stops and the doors open on their floor. "A fighter cannot back down from a taunt in that situation or he's seen as easy pickings. Lunch."

Kelly opens her mouth to argue, and then closes it. "Okay, fine, you guys know best."

"This time we do," Brendan says, and pats her shoulder. "This time, we know best."

It's decided at this point, there in the hall, that the guys will go to Paddy and Tommy's suite, watch some of the DVR'ed matches and critique for awhile, talk about tomorrow until it's time for Tommy to get some sleep, and that Kelly and Tess will go back to their suite. Which suits Tess fine – she's had fun with her husband recently, and she doesn't want to rehash fights. She'd rather watch a chick-flick on hotel pay-per-view and drink room-service frozen strawberry daiquiris with Kelly.

Halfway through "Pride and Prejudice," right after Mr. Darcy drops his I-love-you-most-ardently bomb in the rain, Kelly gets up, weaving a little on her gorgeous shoes. "I've had way too much alcohol for one day," she says. "I have to go to bed now." She leans over and kisses Tess on the cheek. "Thanks for making me come with you guys. I'm so glad I did, it's been awesome."

"Oh, good," Tess says. She's slightly disappointed in not getting into Kelly's favorite "goin' to hell" leisure activity, of drinking alcohol and talking about boys, but Kelly seems pretty firm on going to sleep. "Good night, sweetie."

* * *

So now it's 2 am Saturday night, and Tommy's _got _to get some sleep before tomorrow's bouts. Trouble is, he's still wired. He can feel a good stretch in that left shoulder, where it took some effort to hold Veloso in that deep armbar. The shoulder's still holding up; it doesn't have any feeling of wrongness or strain to it, just the low pull. Well, it's a fight weekend and there's more to come. He iced it long enough afterward. But his body continues to hold on to the fizz-pop adrenaline of the day's matches, and so does his mind, tracking moves and countermoves.

He goes through the remaining possible opponents in his mind – there are only four fighters left, and besides him they include Orlando "Midnight" Le, Erwin De Soto, and that colossal fucking _asshole _Pete "Mad Dog" Grimes. He wants another shot at Mad Dog, wants it bad. It's funny, he thinks to himself, Mad Dog's been shredding opponents right and left, leaving them battered and unable to continue, but Tommy's just got this feeling that he's still got Mad Dog's number. That he's just somehow able to read Mad Dog's moves and thwart him; maybe it's because they tend to think similarly. If Tommy planned out a match, Mad Dog might be able to take him, but he goes on the fly now, just adapting as he feels like it.

He could very certainly have taken Mad Dog right there in front of the elevator, what with the insult to Kelly on top of his ongoing hatred of the guy. He could maybe have killed him. Good thing Brendan and Frank had been there, backing him up so he wouldn't do something really stupid.

Shit. He's got to quit going around and around in his brain with it, feeling the crash of fists and the pressure of forearms on his ribs. Better he thinks of fighting than of Mom, there near the end when she just wanted to talk, holding Tommy's hand and drifting in and out of her pain haze. Mom saying, "I always loved him. I still love him even now, isn't that funny? And at least when he was angry at me I knew that I mattered to him."

It still kills him, Mom's loyalty to Pop even at the end. Maybe if he thought of something else instead.

_Kelly. _That's an immediate thought, and although it brings with it the immediate frustration of wanting her near, it's a comforting one too. He'd call her, but at this point he's pretty sure she's sleeping, and he doesn't want to bother her. It can wait; he'll see her at breakfast.

Besides which, he's got memories. He's got visions of her in his head – dancing, feeding him brownies, bending over... well, there it goes. Boom. Instant hard-on. And that's a thought: a little personal time might let him relax enough to finally sleep.

So. He grabs a handful of tissues from the box near the bed and lets his imagination off the chain. Not something too wildly exciting for tonight; he wants to _sleep _afterward. So: okay, Kelly on her knees, licking her lips. That one blow job he hadn't let her finish had been great – what would it have been like if he had?

He's just reached into his boxers when his phone rings, and it makes him literally jump. Shit. Who could be calling him at 2 am?

It's Kelly – which is unusual, she's usually dead to the world pretty early. But then, so is he on a normal day. He flips open his phone. "Hi, baby. What are you doing up?" There's some background noise but she doesn't answer. "Kelly? You there?" She says nothing, and he suspects she's pocket-dialed him accidentally. He ends the call, waits two minutes, and calls her back.

"Hi," she answers, sounding surprised and sleepy. "What are _you_ doing awake?"

"Too wired to sleep," he confesses. "And you butt-dialed me a few minutes ago. What about you, why aren't you asleep?"

"Did I? Oh. Sorry about that. Well, I _was _asleep. But I had one too many frozen strawberry daiquiris with Tess, and I had to get up to pee just now. I tripped over my purse getting back into bed, which is probably what caused my phone to call you. At least I didn't accidentally call my mom – she'd have assumed my house was on fire or something."

"How many daiquiris is one too many?" he asks, smiling. He hasn't taken his hand out of his boxers, and in fact it's difficult not to stroke, what with the growing interest taking place there. Just hearing her voice is doing things to him.

"Apparently, it's two." There's a smile in her voice, and his mental picture of her lying in bed talking to him is making things _very_ interesting on his end. He shoves his boxers out of the way completely, one-handed, kicking them off and mentally shaking his head at how stupid desperate he is right now.

Because it is not cool to call your girl and say, _Hey, I was just jacking off when you butt-dialed me._

Trouble is, he's starting not to care. He's about three seconds from asking her what she's wearing – not that it matters, really, she's always beautiful. She looked great tonight in that red satin top again, she can be wearing that in his head. And maybe nothing else. He puts his free arm up behind his head and sighs.

"Are you okay?" she asks, sounding suspicious. "You were so... you worried me, earlier. The look on your face."

"Bad shit this afternoon. Thinkin' about Mom, it was gettin' to me. Doing better since I talked to Kevin."

"Good. Why's your phone on anyway? Thought you turned it off when you went to bed."

"Usually I do." He's given in to the demands of his hard-on now, stroking slowly. He can finish after she gets off the phone and goes back to sleep. Maybe he can wait that long... but right now, listening to her voice and thinking about her sleepy and partly naked, and imagining her in his bed instead of hers... it's a little embarrassing, but he can't keep his hand still. He can't even keep it slow anymore.

There's a pause before she says anything else. "Um... Tommy?"

"Uh-huh?" He's trying to keep his breathing normal, but that isn't working either.

"Are you... what are you doing?" It sounds like she can tell.

_Busted. Sooo busted_. And he doesn't care. "Right now? Exactly what you think I'm doing."

There is a very quiet gasp-sigh combination from her end of the phone connection. "Oh."

"I thought it might help me sleep," he explains. "So I was thinking about you. And then you called me, and I called you back. Your voice is completely turning me on, by the way, so if that's bothering you I should probably get off the phone now." He hopes it's _not_ bothering her; he hopes she's been doing enough work with her therapist that she won't mind, because he can't stop now. And after last week, in his bedroom... this is pretty small potatoes.

"No," she says, and her voice is soft and breathy. Like knowing what he's doing is turning her on too. "No, it's – I like it, that you're thinking about me."

_Good. Very, very good._ "You, um, you wanna help me out here?"

"Okay. How?"

"You don't mind? Well, first I'm going to be cliché and ask you what you're wearing."

She laughs very quietly. "You want it sexed up, or you want the truth?"

"Truth." _But please let it not be a granny nightgown_.

"Cotton panties and your shirt - the navy one you left at my house. I sleep in it sometimes."

That mental picture goes straight to his groin, and for just a minute his head spins. So what if it's not a thong and fuck-me shoes, she probably couldn't be wearing anything that would get to him more. Because it's so _them_, _together_, her regular plain panties and his shirt. Which, he remembers, he still wants to rip off her sometime.

"_What _did you say?" she's asking as his mind clears.

"Holy shit, I don't even know what I said. What's your room number again?"

She laughs. "I'm not telling you. You need your sleep. And Frank would kill you."

"He probably would, he keeps saying things about focus. What I need," he confesses, "I need to hear you. I want to hear you make your little noises. Please." He shouldn't be asking, but he can't help it. "Will you? I want to hear you come, is that okay?"

"Tommy – "

"I mean, if it's not okay just hang up. You don't have to play along. I'll see you in the morning when I'm sane again."

"I already am," she says softly, and his need jumps a gear. He squeezes himself to keep from coming right now – if she's touching herself too he has to wait. "Playing along. When I told you what I was wearing and you started muttering something that wasn't even English, I took my panties off then."

"Ffffffuckyeah." He can hear himself say it, can't stop himself saying it, and she's right, it doesn't sound anything like English. "I love you. Are you _sure_ this is okay with you?"

"I think so," she says, sounding optimistic and really horny. "I did spend a good part of the evening thinking really naughty thoughts about you, and I didn't blow up or turn into a frog or anything."

"Yeah?" _That's a good sign._

"Watching you fight. It's not fights in general, it's watching _you_. All that sweaty, raw masculine power... it makes me wanna rip all your clothes off and lick every inch of your body."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," he says, or means to say, but it comes out more a string of hisses, more like_ jeezmaynjosphth_, definitely not English.

"I never did get to finish kissing all your tattoos and running my tongue across them, and I wasn't gonna stop with the tattoos anyway. I'm thinking about that right now," she says, and her voice is full of air and that throaty thing it has when she's heated up, which is making him crazy. He can't help stroking faster, she _sounds_ so good and she would _feel so good_...

"Baby," he says, one clear English word, and then she's talking again.

"Can I confess something else? Seeing you get all up in that guy's face tonight, being willing to go fight him for me... well, it's really un-feminist and totally un-PC, but that so _fucking_ turned me on. That you were willing to hit a guy, let him hit you maybe, just over something he said about me."

He sucks in air through his teeth at Kelly swearing like that, saying _fucking _like that and saying something he did made her aroused. Holy shit, he wants her so bad.

"It makes me insanely wet, seeing all that good muscle right there, and I just want to get down on my knees and taste you, feel how hard you are in my mouth, how good you feel in my hand..." she trails off talking and makes this deep moaning noise. "This is _so_ turning me on, thinking about sucking you off."

If she doesn't come soon he's going to completely fucking lose it anyway. He takes a deep breath so he can get the words out. "Either stop_ saying_ things like that, or make yourself come already. I had a head start." _Slowdown slow down, slow down shit I can't. _He's thinking about her mouth on him, how even when she was doing that she didn't stop her little this-is-so-good noises. "_Nnnnngh._ Kelly, _please._"

So she does it, makes her little pleasure noises the way she does when he touches her. "Oh, God, that's... mmmmm," she says, and he can picture her toes curling now, can picture the mindless ecstasy on her face, eyes closed. _Yeah, like that. Like that. Fuck. Yes. _ "It's driving me crazy, thinking about you. Thinkin' about you all hard and hot inside me and my legs around your back. I might have to lick the phone and pretend it's your ear, _God_, Tommy, I want you so bad," and then she's back into her soft moans, and he's so close to shooting his wad right now, remembering what it's like to be inside her. "_Ohhhh_... oh, I'm gonna come," and she moans again low and drawn-out and his legs tense up, and then he lets go, lets himself fall over the edge, all the tension released in the thunder of blood rushing through his veins, gradually slowing his strokes until he's all relaxed and the wetness on his stomach starts to cool and feel sticky.

He sighs, and reaches for the tissues. "Baby," he says. "Wow. You good?"

"So good," she says. "I _totally_ love how incoherent you get when you're all revved up. It's like you're speaking in tongues or something."

"Huh." He'd give almost anything to have her in his arms right now, warm and happy and close enough to cuddle. He always sleeps well in her bed.

"It is a little bit embarrassing to admit that I could get so excited by something as cheesy as phone sex." She's smiling, he can hear it in her voice.

"Hmmmm."

"Can you sleep now?"

"Uh-huh. So, um... thanks." He's so sleepy.

"The pleasure was mine," she says, and laughs. "Seriously."

He makes a supreme effort to speak clearly. "Sure you're okay?"

"I am really good. And I love you."

"I love you," he mumbles, and his hand clicks his little flip phone shut and he is asleep.

**A/N: You get the rest of Sparta III next week. I apologize for the cheesiness of the phone sex scene, but really, it Had To Be Done, the poor boy needed some relief. Also, Mad Dog is a colossal, ginormous asshole.**


	51. Chapter 51: Mac Daddy of the World

**Ch 51: Mac Daddy of the World**

**A/N: The hotel breakfast buffet is based on the one at the Homestead Resort Hotel in Hot Springs, VA. I want to go eat there again. As for the perfume: Prada Candy is an ode to deliciously-rich benzoin and caramel, sweet as Tess herself; Lumiere Noire for her is a dark chypre rose that would be perfectly at home on an old-school temptress like Ava Gardner.**

**I blame Nik216 for the whole black lace thong bit. Also, this one might be the teensiest smidge of NSFW. Yeah. OHHHH, yeah. Blame Nik. And WinterIsComing01. And ChaosEver, too. (Thank you for idea trampolining, dear ones.)**

**I'm speculating on the nature of that silver thing Tommy's wearing around his neck at certain points in the movie... it's _definitely_ not dog tags, and I am pretty sure it's the same item Manny's wearing in Pilar's photo of the two of them together. Thanks again to Nik for suggesting what it might be – if you recognize it for certain, please comment or PM me.**

**Long chapter here... sorry, but it really needed to be in one piece. As always, loveys, I claim only my own characters, and I adore reviews. **

Sunday morning, Tess wakes up, craning her neck to see over her husband's shoulder to the digital clock. 7:06 am. So she's had six hours' sleep, more or less, since Brendan came back to the room from Frank's suite and made naughty hotel-room love to her. _Thank God for hotel rooms, _she thinks. They get so little time together when they can make noise and try new things in bed. She loves being a mother, but there's something about having to listen out for little voices at night that just damps down your ability to respond in passion to your husband.

For a moment, she thinks she's heard something out in the suite room, and then decides it might just be the TV. She's snuggling back into Brendan's chest, admiring his morning beard (funny how the stubble makes his lips more kissable), when she hears it again: voices.

Huh. She slides out of bed, picks up her satin nightie from where it fell onto the floor last night, and puts it on. Goes to the door and listens. She knows that voice, it's Kelly's; maybe she's on the phone –

No. She knows the other voice too. It's Tommy, talking in that sweet tone of voice she's heard him using on the phone to his girlfriend every night. The realization washes over Tess, _Tommy and Kelly_, and her jaw drops. _Tommy and Kelly_ – and a thousand little oddities fall into place. Things Kelly said. Things Tommy didn't say. The odd feeling at dinner when Frank and Joe and Kelly had been there a few weeks ago, that had been suppressed emotion. The reason Tommy'd run off – had that been because of Kelly? Tommy's request to Tess that her parents take care of Kelly's boys so Kelly could come to the tournament, too... all that. Probably more.

Tess doesn't know how to feel about it. Right now, with a nagging twinge of eavesdropper's guilt but a greater urge to find out what's going on, she cracks her door open, just a hair, just so the voices come clearer.

"– and I'm carb-loading today so I may come down and have second breakfast with the rest of you," Tommy's saying. "I already ran, just a short little hop. I feel fine, so don't you fuss over me."

Tess puts her eye to the crack and peeps through: they're on the couch, with a respectable three feet between them, Tommy wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, and Kelly in sleep pants and camisole. Casual, not that intimate, and at the same time, Tess knows that if Brendan were in the room Kelly would have a bra on under the camisole. He's freshly showered, but Kelly has clearly just rolled out of bed, her curly hair in disarray.

"You sure you're okay?" Tommy's asking Kelly, all sweet with her the way he is with Tess lately. "Bein' here?" He looks a little tired, and he's got some bruising to his face from yesterday, but not much. Under the slight shadows on his jawline and temple, his skin is clear with good color.

"Oh, I'm _glad_ I'm here," she says, and they smile at each other. "You know," Kelly adds, and bites her lip, "I can hardly keep from telling Tess. I've been dying to tell her for the past two weeks."

"I know," Tommy says, and he looks away from Kelly, over at the door, and then back. "Just... just till this thing is over tonight, okay? I seriously think Brendan's gonna flip his lid."

"I still don't understand why," Kelly says, echoing Tess' thought.

"I didn't tell you this? He said, and I quote, 'Kelly doesn't need your shit, leave her alone.'"

"That so does not sound like him," Kelly observes.

"Well, yeah, it does. True, that was, like, months ago, but still. He's lookin' out for you. I _guarantee you_ there's no way he ever lets Emily or Rosie date a guy like me. With all my damn baggage."

_Ah_, Tess thinks. _Yes. Brendan can be overprotective._

Kelly sits up straighter on the couch and raises her chin. "Well, we will see about that, because _he _ain't my daddy either. I'll talk to him myself."

"Tomorrow," Tommy says to her, softly. "Please. I can't deal with it today. I have all I can handle today, with the fights and the interviews and Pop, and on top a' that, I ain't touched you in more than a week and it's makin' me stone crazy. I mean, you're_ right there_ – " he reaches out his hand and swipes at her, deliberately missing, " – and I can't touch you."

Kelly laughs softly, and Tommy smiles back, and then the air seems to get shimmery and hot in between them, and Kelly says, "Don't," in a breathless voice although he hasn't actually done anything.

"I should go," he says, reluctantly. "Frank's got me on a short leash."

"See you at breakfast then," Kelly says.

"Kiss me? Just once."

"Once?" Kelly teases. "I know you and your 'just once,' buddy... I'd be on my back in thirty seconds."

"And you'd _like it_, too," Tommy teases back.

"Till we made enough noise to wake people up," Kelly points out. "Of course, maybe that should be our strategy. It's already done, everybody just deal with it."

"No, really. One kiss, I promise." And he leans forward and kisses her.

It looks like a good kiss to Tess, a lot of heat and hunger and sex in it, but a lot of affectionate sweetness too, Tommy's hand gentle on Kelly's cheek. And their smiles after the kiss catch at Tess' heart. So this is the real deal right here, and she should know... huh. Kelly and Tommy. Who knew?

Kelly sighs and goes back into her room as Tommy leaves, and Tess hears Kelly's shower go on while she's getting back in bed with Brendan, who has (unbelievably) slept through the whole thing. She kisses his cheek, and his eyes open blearily.

"What?" he says. "Am I late?"

"No, babe, school starts on Tuesday. Teacher workdays, remember? You got one more morning before you gotta get up at the crack of dawn again," Tess assures him, and snuggles into his chest. "We're in AC for the fight, you dummy."

"Right, right. So how _are_ you, Mrs. Conlon?" he asks, and puts his arm around her.

"I'm good." She suddenly smiles, thinking about what it might be like to have another Mrs. Conlon around. "Hey. Just thinking. We gotta get Tommy a girl."

"I think he's got one," Brendan says. "Funny she's not here, though, and he says it's definitely not that Jen girl. Did I tell you about her? She is gorgeous."

"And yet he's not dating her. Hmm," Tess says, testing the waters. "I think we should set him and Kelly up."

"_Kelly? _Nawww. What gave you that idea – did you clock him starin' at her ass again? He does it all the time. I know he's got the hots for her, but she's got enough to deal with without his crap. I mean, seriously. He's not exactly a blank slate."

_So Tommy's right._ She'll have to work on that – she knows Brendan, and the more time he has to get used to an idea, the better. She'll keep bringing it up until he accepts it the way she has.

"And she's got kids," Brendan goes on. "He doesn't have any income, he's not stable, he still has combat nightmares..." he shakes his head and kisses her. "I know he's finally working on his shit, and he even said something about wanting to be husband material, so I think he's maybe ready to put a toe into the dating waters, but for Kelly? Nope. She needs somebody who can handle her stuff. Support her, you know."

Tess thinks Tommy can do it. More to the point, he seems to really want to. "I still think it's worth a shot," she says, and draws an abstract design onto his chest. "We're going to breakfast at nine-thirty, right?"

"Think so," he responds, sliding a hand up to her hip, under her nightie. "You know, we've got a little time here... and a hotel room... with no kids in it..." and the next hour is spent in a most pleasurable way, before they take showers and dress casually.

Kelly's sitting in the suite ready to go to breakfast when they come out, in skinny jeans and sandals with a scoop-neck tee. "Come on, I'm starving." Even though it's half past nine, ridiculously late by standards at home, the hotel restaurant is almost empty, and the staff has no trouble putting together a table for ten. The hotel's breakfast buffet is pretty extensive, offering all kinds of breads from double-chocolate muffins to brioche, as well as omelets made to order, brown-sugar bacon, ham, sausage, steak, a crepes station and every kind of fruit in the Western world.

Marco and his parents are staying for the rest of the tournament, even though he's out, and he seems to be having a wonderful time now that the pressure's off. Alex and Tommy and Frank are talking nutrition in the middle of the table, and Kelly's down at the other end with Tess, eating Belgian waffles with fresh fruit. "This pineapple is really good," Kelly says. "I had some with my bacon, my _God_..." she shakes her head. "Wow."

"Bacon," Tommy says, wistfully, and then he points a table knife at Frank. "Tomorrow, you can't keep me away from the bacon, and you better not try."

"Fair enough, you can have bacon tomorrow," Frank says. And then there's a whole chorus around the table, wishing him luck. Marco proposes a toast to Tommy's success, and various juice glasses and coffee mugs are raised, and Tommy looks down at the table and smiles a little shyly.

When the cute Hispanic waitress comes back with the coffeepot, she stands next to Tommy's chair and talks to him while she's filling cups. Tommy answers her questions, straightforward and pleasant, but there's not a hint of interest in his face, which happens to be at about the level of Consuela's boobs (Consuela not being particularly careful about keeping them out of his line of vision, and it's probably deliberate, given the way she's flirting with him). At some point she asks, "So you're staying here tonight?" and a player like Marco – if he weren't trying to behave well in front of his mother – would have correctly taken that as a request for his room number. Tommy, oblivious, looks right past Consuela's perky bosom and locks eyes for two seconds with Kelly before answering that he'll be back after the fight, assuming he's not in the hospital.

Tess has been watching Tommy stare at Kelly all during breakfast. It's not terribly obvious, but there is a whole lot of very subtle eye contact between the two of them, and the air over the breakfast table, if you're paying attention the way Tess is, crackles like electricity. Well, that settles _that_ question for Tess: yes, they've had sex. Probably really good sex, if you judge by Kelly's blush and the slight mooniness on Tommy's face when he looks at her, like he'd_ love _another ticket to Disneyland.

She should have encouraged Kelly to go back to the dressing room after Tommy's match yesterday, and just let nature, i.e. post-fight adrenaline, take its course. The idea makes her laugh to herself, and then she has to say "Oh, nothing," to Kelly's inquiring face.

"So what are you all doing the rest of the day?" Paddy wants to know. Marco's parents indicate that they might try the casino. What Tess thinks of as "the fight contingent," Alex and Tommy and Frank, have various fight-related duties/training/paperwork scheduled. Tess pipes up that she and Kelly are going to watch a chick movie on Netflix in the room, and then go shopping, quelling Kelly's startled look with a glance. Looks like it's going to leave Paddy and Brendan with nothing to do, except that Tommy looks at his father and suggests that he and Brendan join them at the arena, and Marco too, if he likes.

So it's settled. They'll have a late lunch/early dinner here at the hotel – probably room service for Tommy and Frank, so they can avoid media and fans – around 4pm, and then everyone will head over to the arena.

Back in the suite, once Brendan takes off to meet up with the guys, Tess barges right into Kelly's room and starts rooting through the clothes hanging up in the closet. "What are you wearing tonight?"

Kelly, startled, looks up from where she's been putting lotion on her legs. "I've got two dresses with me – you can tell me which one you think. And definitely those black strappy shoes again, I _love _them."

Tess shoves aside a sensible button-down blouse and black pants to reveal a black cap-sleeve dress with deep, narrow V neck openings at front and back. It's travel knit, but looks like silk faille. Behind it is a short A-line dress with tank-style bodice and a modest neckline, covered in tiny square sequins in varying shades of teal and aqua, so that it shimmers even out of the direct light. Tess pulls it out. "This, you're wearing this." As she's turning it to see the sequins sparkle she realizes that it really has no back; the back opening is a drape that drops down to the waist. "Oh, you are _so_ wearing this! It's _beautiful_, where'd you get it?"

"Thrift store. Sixty bucks, a total steal," Kelly says, and bites her lip. "You don't think it's a little... daring, do you?"

"It's a lot daring," Tess declares. "Which is why you are gonna wear it. Show off a little, sweetie. I guarantee you every straight man in the place will be wiping drool off his lower lip, lookin' at you in this thing and wonderin' what you look like out of it."

Kelly's eyes get big. "Did you have three mimosas that I didn't notice at breakfast or something? You don't sound like a proper married lady right now."

"I had Brendan before breakfast," Tess tells her straight-up, and watches Kelly's cheeks flush. "And yesterday afternoon. _And _last night. Hotel rooms make me shameless."

"Oh my God," Kelly says, giggling, and blushes harder, and Tess is wondering, now, whether she and Tommy have managed to have a tryst on this trip. Well, if they haven't yet, she decides, they're _going to_. Somehow. Overprotective Brendan will have to suck it up and deal.

"I'll show you my dress, which is going to make_ my_ husband drool, in a minute. Now. What underwear are you wearing with this – just a thong?"

"I've never worn a thong in my life," Kelly says, looking indignant. "The very idea seems monstrously uncomfortable."

"They're not sweatpants, that's for sure," Tess agrees. "But if men are gonna be staring at your ass in this dress, _and they will_, you should have a thong."

"What's wrong with visible panty line?" Kelly demands. "At least if you have VPL, everybody knows you're wearing underwear."

"Girl, ditch Great-Aunt Whoever's voice in your head, and celebrate your assets for once. Dress like you love your body." Kelly blushes even rosier, and Tess suppresses a wicked chuckle. "Come on, show me the underwear." Kelly pulls a pair of black satin bikini briefs out of her dresser drawer. "Not bad, just a little plain. Well, that does it, we're going shopping. I need some kickass undies too."

She lets Kelly grab her silver sandals and her purse, and then they're out the door, taking a taxi to a department store downtown, where she drags Kelly – who for some reason wants to dally by the perfume counter – into the lingerie section. Tess chooses three pairs of thongs for herself, blue and black and pink, and then she chooses three pairs of thong underwear for Kelly: black lace, black satin, and red mesh with a ribbon tie (that actually ties, like a corset) in the front. Kelly keeps protesting that it doesn't really matter what kind of underwear she's got on if nobody's going to see it, and Tess gives her a stern look.

"Nobody's going to see it, _that's_ what you're saying?" Kelly opens her mouth like she's going to say something, and then she closes it as Tess goes on. "I'm not blind, you know. And Tommy's my brother. And I want him to be happy. Which, clearly, you make him."

Kelly's mouth falls open again, and then she sighs. "I wanted to tell you. But he wanted to wait until after this evening – he thinks Brendan won't approve."

"Well, he doesn't. I floated the idea this morning, just to see. Brendan's worried about you, and he's wrong about this, so you'll just have to let me work on him. He's being overprotective again."

There's a little silence while they just look at each other. "I love him, Tess," Kelly says very softly. "I love him awful."

Tess takes a minute to identify that familiar-sounding sentence, as dialogue spoken by Cher in "Moonstruck," and she smiles. "I know. And he loves you. He's practically blind with it, so breakfast was kind of a revelation."

"So you're insisting that I wear sexy underwear for him? Tess, Tess... we don't want him to have a heart attack." And then, even though it's not all that funny, while they're standing in Nordstrom's with their hands full of racy panties, they laugh until the tears flow, and they hold on to each other.

"This is gonna happen," Tess says. "Both of you, you've been through too much to have to deal with my goodhearted, boneheaded husband screwing things up." She pays for the underwear, and then they stop by the fragrance counter on the way out, where the lovely blond SA makes them generous samples of Prada Candy (for Tess) and Maison Francis Kurkdjian Lumiere Noire pour femme (for Kelly). On the way out she thinks, _Poor Tommy isn't going to know what hit him. Except that, as opposed to some sweaty guy's fists, he's going to absolutely love it._

Back in their suite at the hotel, she gets a half-size bottle of champagne out of the mini-fridge and pops it open. "To love," she says, and they hug each other again before sipping.

"So how's the sex?" she asks, finally, unable to suppress the question any longer.

Kelly puts her face in her hands, smiling. "Oh, God, Tess... just... don't, don't ask me. It's – whoa."

"That good, huh?" Tess is remembering something from months ago, Tommy's hands in Kelly's hair, massaging away her headache, and Kelly making noises of pleasure. Hmm. Maybe he's that good with his hands.

"_Sweet Jesus,_" Kelly says, and closes her eyes.

"Okay, that's probably answer enough," Tess says, and laughs. "I don't need the details. So. True love, huh?" Kelly nods, blinking tears and smiling. "_Now._ Since that's the case, there's something I need you to see," Tess says, and boots up the wi-fi connection on Brendan's laptop to find Youtube.

"What's that?" Kelly says, kicking off her shoes and settling in at her corner of the couch.

"I know you think you've seen enough fights, but this one you _need_ to see," Tess tells her. "I mean it. Don't you be chicken and walk off." And she starts the video: Sparta I. Final match. Brendan in the cage, face bruised from earlier in the day, watching his brother stalk toward the cage like a killer.

She sneaks a look at Kelly, catching Kelly's eyes widening and her face settling into a look of consternation. Tess says nothing as the video rolls; there are tears in Kelly's eyes halfway through the first round, and she whispers, "Oh, no."

"Shh, watch," Tess says. She knows how it ends. On screen, Tommy gets Brendan down on the mat and starts raining blows on him, _wham wham wham wham_, and the tears start to roll down Kelly's face. For just a moment, Tess fears that she's putting her friend – who's been on the other side of a man's fists – in a position she can't bear.

"Hush, hush," Tess says, and pulls Kelly closer. "Keep watching or you'll miss it. You need to see it." They watch through round after round of anger and aggression, brutality and pain, and the awkward hold that popped Tommy's shoulder out of its socket, Brendan's immediate concern for his brother.

"_Oh, God_," Kelly says, between sobs. "How long? He's so alone," Kelly whispers, meaning Tommy, and Tess holds on to her a little tighter. If she'd been surprised before at this relationship, she isn't now. Kelly _gets_ it; she's always understood the vulnerability inside that macho shell.

Then the fifth round. Tommy knowing he's beaten. Brendan's fists up in front of his mouth to hide his own tears. And then Brendan taking Tommy down because he has to, Tommy unable to simply give up until Brendan gives him the strength to stop fighting. "It's okay, Tommy," Brendan says, "I love you," and Tess puts her head over on Kelly's and cries with her as Tommy surrenders to love.

Minutes later, Kelly takes a deep breath, calming down once she's all cried out. "Oh, God, Tess," she says. "I just... I see what you meant, it was a miracle. It _was_. I said Jack and Martin fight and then make up, but this... it broke my heart."

"You needed to see that," Tess tells her again. Because if Kelly loves Tommy, she needs to know this stuff happened.

"No wonder he didn't want me to see it," Kelly murmurs to herself, and shakes her head. "But he's wrong. Like I could think_ less_ of him after seeing that."

"That's my girl," Tess says, and pours the last of the champagne into their glasses – the little bottle only holds about a glass and a half each. "Again: to love. Brothers, fathers, sons. Mothers. Sisters. Daughters. Extended generations. Friends. Plus the kind of love that makes a woman buy a scrap of fabric at ridiculous prices just so her man can enjoy the way it looks for three minutes before he rips it off her."

Kelly rolls her eyes, but she drinks, smiling, and then kisses Tess on the cheek.

"Okay, I'm going to go take a nap before we change for dinner," Tess says. "I suggest you rest too."

* * *

The fights start at 7 pm, and the first card will be Midnight Le versus Erwin De Soto, five rounds at three minutes each, so the longest that match will take is nineteen minutes, plus maybe ten minutes more for officials to deal with injuries. Or so Brendan explains to Kelly across the dinner table.

The second card is, to everyone's secret and not-so-secret joy, Tommy versus Pete "Mad Dog" Grimes. The conversation at dinner centers on the possibilities, how different pairings might have different outcomes. Brendan seems to think that De Soto could take Grimes but not Le; Le could take Grimes but not Tommy. Marco, on the other hand, thinks that Mad Dog could beat everybody except Tommy, so it depends on when he fights him as to the outcome. However, both think that De Soto's the biggest threat to Tommy and that they're the most evenly matched. Paddy, appealed to, says Tommy will win hands down and will not consider any other possibility. In any case, that jerk Mad Dog has been tearing people up in the cage so far, without a shred of sportsmanship, but everybody in their party is certain Tommy is going to absolutely dismantle him.

"Couldn't get him to behave right in the cage last time," Paddy says, and Kelly suddenly realizes he's nervous, probably from sitting around with nothing to do. "I know I taught him better as a boy. But he was downright rude. Wouldn't shake hands, help anyone up, stay in the cage..." He trails off, apparently talking almost to himself

Brendan leans over and puts a hand on his father's arm. "You know he was trying to keep a low profile, Pop. Wouldn't stay in the cage for fear somebody would recognize him."

"Well, it was damn stupid," Paddy says, stubbornly. "Somebody was gonna recognize him anyway." He knocks back half a glass of iced tea at a gulp, and Kelly blinks, seeing in the gesture the practiced belting of amber liquid, a years-long habit he's done his best to shed. After swallowing it, though, he seems to realize what he's doing.

She catches his eye and smiles a little. "I'm nervous too. Why don't you go on down there? No point sitting around and getting the jitters. Go rearrange the first aid kit or something," she says very quietly to him.

"Well, yesterday he asked me to look after you at the fights," he murmurs back in that growly baritone. "So I gotta do that."

"Me specifically?" He nods, and she can't help the stupid happy smile that pops up. "That was sweet of him. And I know that meant a lot to you, too – that he trusted you to take care of me." Paddy nods again, and this time he smiles too.

She's still a bit rocky from the afternoon, even though she's had another shower and a nap. Way too much emotion in a short time period, with the promise of more to come. Watching Tommy in the cage again, _oh God_, and these damn lacy thong panties that feel like wearing nothing under her dress... she's just. Going. To. Die.

The smoky eye makeup, the red nails... the shoes, the perfume... both she and Tess are walking around looking – as most of the other women in the arena – deliberately sexy. She keeps catching Marco staring at first her, and then Tess, and looking away with embarrassment. Well, when they get to their seats there will be plenty of other female eye candy for Marco to stare at. Brendan had said he'd wanted to go wish Tommy good luck before he and Frank left for the arena, but dinner took longer than they'd planned, and it's quarter after five when they all troop down the hall to his dressing room in the restricted area.

Tommy seems okay – relaxed, even. He's drinking water, doing a few footwork drills with Frank, and he hasn't taped up yet. She doesn't say much, while Tommy discusses strategy with Brendan and Paddy. "Dog's used to going in aggressive and stayin' that way. His defensive skills suck because he doesn't use 'em much. And I'm faster than he is, too. So I'm gonna go right in on the offensive, fast as possible, make sure he doesn't get off more than a jab or two. And that's another thing, he leaves himself open when he's committing himself to a strike. It's a kindergarten mistake – but nobody really notices, because he's such a fu- uh, freakin' freight train most of the time."

Kelly doesn't miss Tommy's redirect of his standard Marine-issue swearing, in front of Tess and Mrs. Santos. It makes her smile. He'll swear in front of _her_, though, in private.

Brendan says something about Le and his Muay Thai skills, and Tommy nods. "Yeah. But I think De Soto takes him, I think De Soto's got more versatility, you know? Better on the mat. Just as competent with the striking power."

"You think it's gonna be you and De Soto?" Brendan asks, tilting his head to the side.

Tommy nods again. "Yeah. Me and De Soto. He's the only guy in the joint that I worry about."

"I agree," Brendan says, and Alex echoes him. "It's you and De Soto. Tough one. But we'll talk about it when this one's over."

Then Tess catches Kelly's eye, grabs Brendan's arm, and starts steering him toward the door. "Come on, let's go. You know you're gonna want to talk to people out there, and Tommy needs to prepare. Come on." She puts her other hand on Mrs. Santos' arm and talks to her as they start herding most of the group out.

At some point, Tommy's perched himself on one of the stools that sits in front of the mirror, swinging his bare feet. Paddy has a few quiet words with him, but Tommy's not responding in a timely fashion. Instead, he's staring at Kelly past his father's arm, looking suspicious, and finally Paddy notices he hasn't got Tommy's full attention, and stops talking, turning around to see what Tommy's looking at.

"You been _cryin'_," Tommy says to her, frowning. "Who made you cry? 'Cause I got a thing or two to say to an asshole that would make you cry."

She can't say,_ You did_. What she does say is, "Watched a sad video on Youtube with Tess a couple of hours ago. Girl time – I'm fine. And how you can tell, I don't know! I thought I looked pretty good."

"I dunno, I can just tell," he says. But his eyes keep running over her – from her hair, styled normally except for the little rhinestone clip keeping curls out of her eye, down to her red toenails, and back up. "You look really great," he says, and although the words are simple they are absolutely sincere. She smiles a Mona Lisa smile to herself, thinking,_ Just wait until you see the back_.

"Thanks," she says demurely, watching him try not to stare at her legs below the short skirt.

"Hey, Pop, I want to talk to Kelly a minute," Tommy says to his father, and Paddy raises an accepting hand and nods. "Don't forget what I asked you yesterday," he adds as Paddy walks toward the door.

She walks over close to where he's sitting on a stool. Frank's still in the room, but he doesn't seem to be paying attention, and she wonders what it is that Tommy doesn't mind Frank seeing or hearing, but wants his father out of the way for.

"You do somethin' for me?" he asks.

"Of course."

He pulls a chain off his neck and hands it to her. "Hold on to that and take real safe care of it, okay?"

"Sure. Can I wear it?"

"That would be safest," he says.

She leans back into the light to get a good look at the thing on the chain. "What _is_ this? I've seen you wearing it all this time and I just never thought to ask what it was. Guess I thought it was a saint's medal or something, but it's this long skinny tube thing."

"It's a vial of holy water," he says, and rubs the end of his nose.

Kelly, puzzled, looks up at him. "Thought you didn't believe in holy water."

"I don't."

She angles the silver pendant into the light and reads, "_Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,_" engraved along the side. And then it comes to her - of course. "This was Manny's."

He looks away, pressing his lips together, and nods. "Yeah. His mom gave it to him right before we were deployed the first time. Said it would protect him." He shrugs a little.

"Of course you'd want it close to you," she says, and she does understand. Mothers and love and faith – even if you don't believe anymore, a mother's faith is a powerful thing, and whether Tommy could articulate it or not, this silver chain holds its symbol. How much it matters, that he's trusting her with this item, this relic made sacred by loss and love. She blinks tears from her eyes, thinking of her own sons.

I'll guard it with my life," she says lightly, and puts the chain around her neck, dropping the pendant down the front of her dress, where it comes to rest between her breasts. It's warm from resting against his chest, and the heat comes to the surface of her skin as it does any time he touches her.

"Oh, don't do that," he says. "If it comes to you or the chain, I'd rather have you." And he smiles.

"Okay, then." She steps up to kiss him, holding both his hands. "And again, I am gonna be totally un-PC and tell you to go kick that guy's asshole right up through his mouth, or his teeth down the other direction, whichever seems best to you."

"Absolutely," he agrees, and kisses her back, a sweet kiss that turns possessive and hungry, and she savors the taste of his mouth. Next time she kisses him he's sure to taste like the coppery tang of blood, but for this moment, anyway, he's whole.

"Gotta go," she says, reluctantly, and turns to walk out. She silently counts the seconds, waiting for his reaction to the backless dress, but it doesn't come until she looks at him over her shoulder.

His jaw has dropped, and his ears are bright red, and he mutters almost under his breath, in a tone of reverent astonishment, "_Fuck me backwards on a camel_..."

"So do you like my dress?" She reaches for the doorknob, still smiling innocently over her shoulder.

"_Jesus H. Christ on a piece of toast,_" he says fervently. She hears Frank crack up, just _dying_ laughing over in the corner, and then Tommy jumps off the stool and starts after her. "Come back over here, Doherty."

"No, Conlon," she says. "It's an incentive. See you later." She lets the door close after her, and then bolts for the entrance that her All-Access Pass, courtesy of Brendan, will allow her to go through. It's a pain to walk so fast in heels, but still. He doesn't need to chase her down the hall, especially when she knows it might very well end with her back up against the wall and her legs around his waist, no matter who's watching.

She's a little surprised to realize that she doesn't much care if anybody's watching – well, maybe children, or people with cameras, would be bad – and she reflects that her sessions with Dr. Hostetter have certainly made a difference in her attitude toward sex. As she enters the arena and finds the Conlon party, she wonders briefly if her Big Aunt Doris has ever had an orgasm in her life.

Well, maybe she has... Kelly herself has had orgasms on her back, with the lights off, in the missionary position, nightgown still on, no "fancy stuff" involved. Nothing wrong with that, unless you insist that it be that way every time.

While walking to her seat, she spends a good minute or two thinking about Tommy after that fight, the one after he'd come back to Brendan's house and she'd been so_ mad _at him – and watching him fight had made her so aroused, so hungry for him, that she'd started climaxing practically from the minute he'd pushed inside her, all raging male animal on a testosterone high, a hundred and eighty-five pounds of magnificent beast. Now, she shivers, feeling her nipples contract and her center swell with wet heat, just from thinking about it.

That had been intense enough. But this? This, she thinks, is going to be worse in terms of her self-control. She feels the presence of his pendant, that vial of holy water, between her breasts, and the heat in her abdomen grows. He's worn this thing probably every day since Manny died, at least two years ago, and it has vital meaning for him – and he's asked_ her _to hold it for him. Her hands are remembering the shapes of him and her mouth remembering the taste of his kiss...

She can hardly pay attention all during the first fight, between two guys every bit as solid with muscle as Tommy is. Brendan and Marco, and even Tess, are following every move. Marco's father has his iPad with him, and he's got ESPN pulled up so they can hear the commentary as well as look up and see all the action, which is sort of fascinating to Kelly because it's so meta. She watches the cage in a sort of daze, thinking about Tommy and trying to breathe, and in the third round, one of the guys gets the other one on the ground and into a chokehold. They spin and flip around, the dark-skinned guy trying to get out of the hold, but the other one is keeping him there. Brendan, intent, is leaning forward and muttering things like "work your hips, press in, use the core," and then the guy in the hold slumps forward like he's passed out and the arena erupts.

"De Soto!" Tess yells, turning to Kelly. "De Soto took Le!" Kelly tries to remember who thought this De Soto guy was going to win, and then gives up. Doesn't matter. Tommy will be out in fifteen minutes.

The time passes like an interminable ice age, but finally the lights go down again and he comes out of the tunnel in that black hoodie again, arrogance in the walk, "Sabotage" blaring from the speakers. Kelly shivers, and Tess hugs her one-armed, whispering in her ear, "I know, I used to get cold chills watching Brendan come out."

"They're not _cold_ chills," Kelly whispers back, and Tess just laughs.

"Oh, I know how you're feeling. Trust me, I know."

Then that jerk Grimes comes out and enters the cage too, and there they are, two animals with their hackles up. Kelly peeks over at the iPad, and Mr. Santos offers her the headphones. She holds one up to her hear to hear one of the ESPN commentators saying, "Now this is the matchup I've been waiting to see all tournament. These two have a history at this point, and I'm anxious to find out how this one goes."

"I agree, Bryan, this ought to be interesting. You know, these two have faced each other unofficially twice, and in the cage once, and I even heard from someone at the hotel where the fighters are staying that they almost got into it in the lobby of the hotel last night."

"Well, Sam, Tommy Conlon has won all three of those earlier fights, and you know Mad Dog Grimes never backs down – he's got a rep for never having tapped out of a professional fight – so he's either going to settle the score, or have to admit that Conlon's the better fighter. I'll tell you: my money's on Conlon."

"Just to play devil's advocate here," the other guy says, "you know in this sport anything can happen at any time. It is possible that things just happened to go Conlon's way, and it might not mean he's the superior fighter."

"Once could be a fluke, twice could be a coincidence. But you were sitting here with me two yeas ago, Sam, and you saw that matchup. Conlon – who, in case our viewers haven't made the connection, used to fight using the last name Riordan – was all over Grimes, and I don't think Grimes even landed one strike. So that's my prediction for what happens here tonight."

Up in the cage, Grimes is saying something that looks like a challenge, though they can't hear him. Tommy, looking calm but ferocious, merely raises his hand and lifts his forefinger. Then the second finger, and the third. Then, finally, the fourth finger comes up, and he makes a "bring it" gesture as Grimes produces a growling noise audible to the third row.

Onscreen, the Bryan guy says, "Now that's unprecedented. We just got Tommy Conlon's version of trash-talking, which he managed without saying a word, implying that he's already taken Grimes down three times and he expects to do it again. Let's see if Pete Grimes has an answer."

And the match starts. Kelly hands the headphones back to Mr. Santos with whispered thanks, and focuses on the cage as the roar of the crowd fills her ears.

From the beginning the action is all Tommy. The second the ref starts them, he's after Mad Dog with a vicious kick and a series of blindingly fast strikes. Mad Dog's taking them and throwing a few of his own, but they don't seem to faze Tommy or even slow him down; within a minute and a half Mad Dog's already on the mat, arms pinned, subjected to Tommy's ground-and-pound technique, and within two minutes he's out cold. The ref is yelling, "Break break break!" at Tommy and pulling him backward, and then declaring that Grimes is knocked out. Tommy, unable to stop pacing, flexes his arms and shoulders like a bodybuilder and produces an animal roar of triumph, and Kelly's knees nearly go out from under her at the blatant display of power and masculinity.

Six months ago, she would have found this laughable. But now? Knowing him, what he's like, the sweetness underneath? It thrills her. Every part of her body is alive with need.

The ref raises his arm in the traditional gesture of announcing the winner, as Grimes' people and the medical team come in to treat him. Tommy says something to Grimes' manager through that predatory smile he can produce sometimes, and the guy actually reaches up to shake his hand. And then he's gone, out of the cage and into the tunnel, and Tess whispers "Go!" urgently into Kelly's ear. Kelly looks at her startled, and Tess pushes her a little. "I'll say you had to go pee."

"I'll be back," Kelly says out loud, and pushes her way to the exit where she can get to the dressing room.

Frank is standing in the door when she gets there, and for a moment she falters, remembering Frank's rules for his fighters. But he nods when he sees her, putting a hand on her arm. "Listen, I don't normally approve of this kinda thing... but he's in there pacing like a caged tiger, and if he doesn't relax and start breathing normally real soon De Soto's gonna eat 'im alive with duck sauce in the next fight. Get him to calm down, okay?"

"Ten minutes," Kelly says, and Frank nods.

"I'll be out here."

She locks the door behind her and walks on unsteady legs to where he's pacing around the dressing room, chest still heaving and his eyes still those of a wild animal. When he sees her, he reaches for her immediately, cupping his hand around the back of her neck. "I need you," he says, in that raspy growl his voice has when he's out of control.

"I need _you,_" she says, breathless, before his mouth comes down on hers and her knees almost buckle with desire.

He pulls her close, and his other hand goes straight for her butt, up under her dress. When it finds her bare buttock and then the strip of lace, the breath goes out of him. "_Fuck._"

"You need an _invitation,_ Conlon?" she asks incredulously. He answers her by spinning her around and walking her toward the stool near the mirrored table. _Ah yes. _She puts her hands on the stool for support and leans over, meeting his eyes in the mirror as he strips off his shorts.

"Holy motherfuckin' hell," he hisses under his breath, flipping up the skirt of her dress and running his hands over her. "God, you're _soakin' wet_."

"You did that." She arches her back to entice him further. He presses closer, pulling the little strip of fabric to the side and touching her center, pushing two fingers inside her and making that growling noise that drives her crazy. "Tommy, _please_." She can feel him against the inside of her thigh, hot and stiff as a girder, and then he's filling her up, one hand on her hip and the other reaching around to rub her at the apex of her thighs, and she moans at how damn good it feels.

"Fuck," he says again, and their eyes meet in the mirror again, and watching him – seeing his chest heave, his nostrils flared, his eyes intense, body straining to please her – sends her into a whole other zone of sexual need. Her hands clutch at the stool and her hips move on their own, and she vaguely realizes _this is why women wear thongs, it's power_ –

She's got no control over her mouth now, it's saying things like _Goddamn_ and _Fuck me_ and _You are a glorious beast_, she can't stop it, and the orgasm hits her like a body slam. Her body goes into some arrhythmic spasm, and his grip on her hips goes painfully hard as he keeps her steady, pounding her faster now. She opens her eyes again, feeling completely drunk on sensation, looking at him in the mirror, and she sees him hit his own release, jaw clenched and eyes squeezing shut in extreme pleasure. She can feel him come, too, heat and wetness deep inside her, and another string of profanity ringing in her ears.

He gradually slows down and then stops moving, leaning over to kiss the side of her face. He pulls her upright, hugging her from behind and looking at the two of them in the mirror again. Her face is flushed, eyes glittering, but he looks _sleepy_. And happy – that dangerous darkness is gone out of his face, and he still looks fierce, but extremely pleased with himself.

"I am definitely keeping those panties," she tells him.

"Good idea." His chest is still heaving, but slower now, and he rolls his head around on his neck. She doesn't have to ask if he's relaxed now; it's obvious.

"Frank'll be pleased you've calmed down," she says, and can't keep the grin away anymore.

"Yeah, yeah." He squeezes her waist gently. "God, baby, that was fucking amazing."

"_You_ are fucking amazing. Now go ice or something, you still got work to do."

He rolls his eyes, smiling, and slaps her lightly on the behind. "Keep it warm for me, okay? And listen: don't you get all tangled up in feelings that don't belong to you. You and me, we're solid. This is not kinky, this is not a booty call, this is us bein' together, and by tomorrow everybody will _know_ we're together. You're my girl. You got me?"

There's a knock on the door. "I got you," she says, and walks toward it. "Catch you later... and remember: Mac Daddy of the World, no matter what." She blows him a kiss and opens the door to go out.

"Hey," Frank says immediately, skipping over anything embarrassing. "When you go back inside, see if Brendan will come back here. I think he'd be helpful."

"No problem," Kelly says, and heads for the ladies' room. Her thighs are wet, which gives her a good little shiver of pleasure, but that really has to be dealt with. Ten minutes later, she's straightened her hair, repaired a few smudges to her makeup, and freshened up everywhere. Her face is still flushed, but she can't do much about that. At least she doesn't look recently banged now.

On the way back to her seat, she runs into that nice-looking guy from the Grimes group in the hall. "Hi," he says, and sticks out his hand. "I'm Fenroy. Tommy doin' okay?"

"Far as I know," she says, shaking his hand. "How about your friend?"

"Mad Dog? He's not my friend really. I work for his manager, though. Think he's gonna be okay, the doctors are checkin' him out now. Not a whole lot of serious damage," he says. "Tommy was too quick to be leaving anything more than bruises."

"Oh," she says. "I'm Kelly Doherty, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Kelly. Listen, I'm sorry about that incident last night. Mad Dog's not much of a gentleman."

This strikes her as the understatement of the year, and she laughs a little. Then remembers how she's just spent the last twenty minutes, and laughs harder. "Neither is Tommy," she says.

"Well, no," Fenroy agrees, grinning. "But he's a nice guy all the same, and I can't say that about the Dog. Well, anyway, good luck to him."

"Thanks, I'll pass it on," Kelly tells him, and then goes back to the arena where some metal-rock artist is performing between the matches. She doesn't like this kind of music, and she can't tell one artist from another, and it's too damn loud. Crowd seems to be loving it, though. She turns right around and goes back into the lobby to get a drink; she's parched and she definitely does not need alcohol right now. Vitamin water will do fine.

She pulls out her cell phone and texts Tess: _in lobby, getting water. Want one?_

Tess replies in thirty seconds: _Yes pls. How r things? Good?_

_Very very good. Def keeping todays purchase. omg rrowwr. Btw, send Brendan back to Frank and Tommy._

Tess: _Thought so. ;) Will do._

At 9 pm, Kelly's back in her seat, nervous. This is not quite like the Mad Dog fight; it's not like anything she's seen before. The crowd is screaming already and the fight won't start for fifteen minutes.

Paddy's on her left side, chatting away about nothing at all: the ocean, seagulls, the times he's been to Wilkes-Barre, Moby Dick, some oatmeal recipe Tess gave him, yada yada, and Kelly knows he's nervous too, but it just makes her feel worse, like she has to deal with his nervousness as well as her own. Tess, on her right side, turns to her and starts talking, right over Paddy's nattering. "_Listen._ You have a job, and you have to do it."

"What?"

"Stay positive. Every time he looks in this direction, you smile and look encouraging. Even if you are afraid he's gonna get crunched, _you can't let him see that_. You can't let him see that you're worried."

"That's insane, Tess. I can't do that." Kelly knows she's an emotional seesaw. She can act, but there are times when she can't cover up her real feelings. This is one of those times.

Tess looks at her seriously. "Yeah, I couldn't always either. But this is going to be a slugfest, I think, and – "

"Do _not_ say slugfest," Kelly interrupts her. "Every time I hear that word I think of some hippie slugs getting high out in a field, while the slugs on stage play 'Free Bird' on acoustic guitar and everybody holds up their cigarette lighters. Or maybe slugs wearing lederhosen and drinking beer out of steins. Either way, it messes with my head."

Tess cracks up. "_Slugfest_, OMG, you're gonna kill me, girl."

"I'm serious. I hate slugs."

When Tess stops laughing, she sighs. "I'm serious too. Don't let him see you're worried. It's a good thing that only big gestures show up from this distance. Go for hammy stage actor, not subtle Oscar performance, okay? Smile. Blow kisses. Yell 'Get him!' That sort of thing. You can do that, just watch me."

"Fine. This is not exactly helping, you know. You both think he's gonna get killed."

"No," Paddy says, and Tess echoes it.

"No, he's not gonna get killed. But the skill level here is evenly matched, and even if he wins he's probably going to get smashed up some, and you have to be prepared for that. Cuts, bruises, facial swelling, broken fingers. Concussion, damaged spleen... no, he's not gonna get killed, but he will be hurt."

Kelly knows. She's treated fight patients at the ER. She's seen some of the other fighters leave the ring – staggering, bloody, on stretchers. She wonders again why Tommy would want to put himself through this crap, and then tells herself it doesn't matter. It's his decision.

"You doin' okay?" Paddy asks her.

"Hangin' in there," she tells him. "You?" He just nods. She pats his arm. "We'll all hang in there together." The lights go down, and she shivers as the speakers blast Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and the announcer introduces Erwin De Soto.

De Soto's actually a nice-looking guy, or he would be if he hadn't taken several hits to the face in his earlier bout with Le. Younger than Tommy, not that that's surprising; Tommy's on the upper end of the age range here. About the same height, weight, build. De Soto's wearing red with yellow gloves, and he looks determined.

Paddy sighs beside her, and she pats his arm again.

Then it's "Sabotage," and Tommy coming out in that ubiquitous black hoodie. She really can't see his face from this far away, but then it pops up on the Jumbotron screen, and she can see his eyes, and she shivers again. _Intense_ does not even begin to describe it. It's still exciting to watch him, as he strips off the hoodie and lets the official check him over, as he bounds up into the cage in black shorts and red gloves. But somehow it's more serious now, more like a battle, and she finds herself praying for him – that he'd have strength and endurance and stay true to himself in there.

Tommy and De Soto come to the center for instructions, nod to each other, and go back awaiting the call to war. Now she can see Brendan at the corner of the cage with Frank, having shed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, calling encouragement. She actually hears him yell, "You're a fuckin' beast, li'l bro, break his head."

They all laugh, even Marco's mother, because it's so not like Brendan – and yet, Kelly suspects, that's been in there all along, and only a few people would have seen it before.

The first round is even. Unlike in the last one, when Tommy went straight for Grimes as fast as possible, he and De Soto dance around each other for a while, ducking blows and kicks, until De Soto pushes in and goes for a shot to Tommy's head. Instead of protecting his head, Tommy counters De Soto's arm by twisting away, blocking the strike with his forearm, and kicking at De Soto's rib area. Right after that, they're clinched up, each one trying to get in elbow and knee strikes. Right before the end of the round, Tommy takes De Soto to the ground and gets in a good shot to the back of the head – and then there's the horn.

During the minute-long break, Tommy sits on the stool, sips water, and listens to Frank. Brendan's drying his head and shoulders with a towel, saying something every now and then, and they're all intent and very calm. Kelly can even discern Frank's mouth saying "Breathe, relax, you got this," at this distance.

The second round is much the same in terms of the equal strengths, although this time Tommy gets De Soto down again and then they twist around on the mat for awhile, neither fighter finding purchase for a hold. They tussle without apparent effect all the way through the second, the five full minutes allowed for a championship fight round, and when the two break for corners this time, they're both breathing hard.

This time, Kelly leans over Tess to see Mr. Santos' iPad, with the TV commentary. "These two are very well matched, Bryan, and I am really glad to see a championship bout that looks like one, where you don't know the outcome before it starts. I'm seeing a very high level of skill here, ability to shift from one fighting style to another smoothly, and I'm seeing it from both fighters."

"Yes, I agree. I think the surprise here is Conlon, because we didn't see any of this sophistication when he fought in this tournament two years ago. We saw the boxing skills, we saw the Muay Thai, but this time we're seeing a lot of other techniques he just didn't get into before because he was too busy beating people up." They both chuckle a little. "But I would repeat what I said before, about Tommy Conlon being back in the game. Never mind that he spent a year in the brig, he's back. And _deserves_ to be here in the cage with Erwin De Soto, who has an excellent reputation for his all-around MMA skills. De Soto has the ability to get an opponent down and really submit him, so we'll have to see how this goes. One thing is sure, though: this is an exciting fight. And if you're just joining us, we are about to start the third round in the championship bout of Sparta III..."

Again, it's a fairly even round, but this time instead of wrestling, they start out hitting and kicking each other, Muay Thai style, the clinch-and-strike method dealing some damage on both sides. Kelly can see a round bruise, from De Soto's knee, forming on Tommy's lower right rib cage, and she fights back a moment of panic. The liver is on that side of the body, just behind those ribs, and he's already had issues with his liver not behaving properly. De Soto takes Tommy down and tries to pin him, tries to get his leg in a hold, but Tommy twists out. De Soto grabs him again, and Tommy twists loose again, this time knocking De Soto onto his back. Tommy gets his feet under him, picks De Soto up, and body-slams him once, twice, three times, and then he gets De Soto's arm pinned in a vulnerable position.

The horn interrupts what looks like a hold De Soto will have to tap out of. Both fighters are heaving and blowing, obviously tiring, and Kelly prays again. Sitting on the stool, Tommy sips water and nods at Frank, and then his eyes find Kelly in the crowd. She blows a kiss, manages a smile. Puts her fist to her chest, and he repeats the gesture. "You're doin' good," Tess tells her. "Stay positive."

The fourth round is all over the place: kicks to the body, hand and elbow strikes. De Soto gets his arms around Tommy and body-slams him. Somehow Tommy rolls out of that and sweeps De Soto's feet, bringing him to the mat and landing several blows to his head and shoulders. De Soto traps Tommy with his legs, going for the same kind of leg hold that Brendan had pulled him in with in Sparta I, but Tommy's wise to that now; he hops up and off the mat.

Tess has been yelling her head off the whole time, but now Paddy speaks in Kelly's ear. "I don't believe it," Paddy says quietly. "Somebody who's actually better than Tommy on the mat." Kelly looks at him, and he adds, "Tommy's better at striking. I think he might be ahead in the points."

They're both clearly tired now; moves are slower and they're both gasping for breath. They get into another Muay Thai clinch, Tommy landing some knee kicks and elbow- and fist-blows to De Soto, but De Soto's giving the punishment back now. Again, the horn ends the round and there's only one more to go.

Frank, pressing the enswell against Tommy's cheek and eye, says something to him that has Tommy's head snapping up, maybe in surprise although his face has no surprise on it. He looks grim. He starts to nod slowly. Brendan comes around, crouching down to speak directly into his brother's face, and Tommy nods at him, faster, like_ Yeah, yeah, I'm bought in_. Right before Tommy gets up again, he looks across at Kelly and she does her fist -to-chest move again. He smiles. It's lopsided because one side of his face is already swelling up, but it's a smile, and she smiles back.

This round starts aggressively, De Soto coming right in with his clinch-and-strike technique, and he gets off a knee to Tommy's head that sends Tommy spinning away a few steps, a little dazed.

"Oh shit," Paddy whispers, and Tess bites her fingers. But Tommy recovers, and comes back toward De Soto, swinging brutal fists at De Soto's head and face. And then it happens: he slaps his right hand, open for a side-arm blow, at De Soto's head, and as De Soto brings his arms up to protect his head, Tommy turns his body, grabs the back of De Soto's neck with his left hand, and hurls his left knee into De Soto's ribs, just under the cut of his pectoral muscle.

De Soto drops like a rock, on his knees, head down, in pain. The ref waves Tommy off, and he stands there blowing like a whale while the medics look De Soto over. And then the ref signals a TKO; De Soto is unable to continue.

The arena explodes with noise. Tess screams, "Liver shot! Liver shot! Oh my God, Tommy won!" Paddy claps so hard Kelly thinks he's going to hurt his hands. Marco is shouting his head off, and so is Alex the intern.

Tommy stands there near the center of the ring, still panting. He leans down onto his knees and grimaces, but when the medics come to him he straightens up and Kelly can read his lips, now bloodied a little: _I'm okay_. He's not okay, she knows. That had been a brutal knee to the head. But he's alive.

And he's won.

Let other people rejoice about money. She's rejoicing that her man has made it through, the undisputed champion in his own eyes as well as everybody else's. He stands there, looking a little blank, while De Soto's trainer helps De Soto stand for the official declaration. When that's done, he raises both fists into the air and whoops in triumph, an eerie noise that sends chills up the back of Kelly's spine and heat through her abdomen again. Someone brings the belt up to present it to him, and he takes it, nodding thanks. He's still looking sort of blank and disbelieving, but then he raises the belt into the air and says something that apparently confuses the presenters in the cage; he doesn't repeat it even when asked.

Kelly's starting to have a bad feeling about this. Tess pokes her and then Paddy. "Let's go. Let's go let's go. Now." They start pushing their way over to the tunnel, showing their passes to the security guys and walking down the hall to the dressing room. In a few minutes, Brendan and Frank are hustling Tommy in.

"Kelly?" Frank asks, turning his head to her as they maneuver Tommy to the stool near the mirrored table again, the one she'd bent over earlier, and she fights off a shiver. "Need a little help here. You know what to look for? Medics are comin', but I thought a prelim might be helpful."

She nods. He clearly doesn't want Tommy nervous about it, but she'll be looking for signs of cognitive damage or delay in the messages sent by the nervous system. "Sure. Let me look at the face, too."

Tommy looks straight at her and smiles a little. "Hey, you," she says. "Lookin' a little rough there."

"You should see the other guy," he says with an evil grin.

So far so good. He made a joke. She runs her hands lightly over his head, neck, shoulders, ribcage, and down to thighs and legs. No obvious broken bones. "Anything hurt?"

"That's a stupid question," he answers, in a cheerful voice. "Of course I hurt anywhere I got hit."

But that doesn't sound like him at all, admitting that it hurt. Unless, of course, he's planning to make a play for her personal care services, in which case it does sound like him. She can't tell yet. She moves back up to his face, running her fingers carefully over it and feeling for contusions. He's going to have a bruise, a fairly bad one, over that left eye again, and he's split his lower lip again, but the face seems okay. The ears, though – "Ear's hot, Frank," she says, fingering the cartilage of Tommy's left ear. "Ice, please."

Frank scoops a premade ice pack out of the cooler and presses it to Tommy's ear. Tommy ignores him, staring straight at Kelly the whole time. She starts the neurological field exam: fishes her tiny penlight out of her clutch purse and checks his pupils, _good,_ has him push her hands away with his hands and then his feet,_ good_, has him follow her finger with his eyes, _good_, and all the rest. Then she starts asking the questions.

"So who won?"

"Me," he says firmly. He does not, however, say _No shit, dumbass_, and she starts to wonder.

"Good for you. What city are we in?" He correctly answer that one, and then the ones about the year and the President. And then she says, "What day is it?" which is of course trickier than it sounds.

"Sunday?" he says, and for the first time he sounds a little unsure.

"Good. What day of the month?"

"Um..." He blinks three times before answering. "The first. First of August. I mean September."

"Right. What's your name?" While she's been doing this, she's been finishing up her manual surface exam, and it's possible that her closeness and her touching him is getting to him at a molecular level, because he doesn't answer right away.

Paddy – who probably knows what she's doing – leans over and says, "Name, son." And when Tommy keeps staring into Kelly's eyes, he barks it. "Name!"

And Tommy spits out name-rank-number, military style and very fast, as if it's an old habit jogged into his head by the sound of his father's voice. "Conlon, Thomas R., Staff Sergeant, USMC, sir!" following that with a nine-digit military service number. And then he blinks, looking confused.

"Good," Kelly says, catching Frank's eye and nodding. "I'll tell them when they get here, Frank."

Tommy, still looking at her, says, "You are so beautiful," in such a tender tone of voice that she knows for sure that he's concussed and his inhibitions are on vacation.

"Well, you'd better have them check your vision in the ER," she says back, lightly, "because you are _going_ to the hospital, my lad."

"Why?" he asks.

"You have a concussion," she says.

"I'm fine," he says, but ruins that by picking up her left arm and pressing his lips to the tattoo on her wrist.

And then the EMTs and the fight doctor are there, and she's answering questions, watching the physician run his own cognition test on Tommy, and stepping back out of the way.

"What was all that?" Brendan asks quietly. "The hand-kissing, I mean."

" Having a concussion is a little bit like being drunk," she explains. "Don't tell me you haven't had one."

"Oh, I have. I just don't remember them," he says, and smiles.

"Your impulse control is shot, and you say things you wouldn't say if you weren't concussed. Or drunk. Or whatever. He's got no brakes right now, so don't take offense at anything he might say at the moment, okay?"

"Got it," Brendan says.

And then the EMTs put Tommy, protesting, into the portable fold-up wheelchair they're carrying around with them, and push it out the door, and he's gone with them to the hospital. _So much for that second session of after-fight loving_, she sighs to herself. He needs medical care.


	52. Chapter 52: The Man Code

**Ch 52: The Man Code**

**A/N: Several POV switches in here, hope that isn't too confusing! Concussions are a bigger hazard to brain function than people used to think. And now that Tommy's got one, he's unable to self-censor. _Whoops_. Therefore, he's swearing like a Marine in this one. I apologize right now.**

**Also whoops, in the past few chapters I started calling Adam the intern "Alex" by mistake. Will go back and fix. And had to throw in a little reference to my favorite fictional doctor of all time. **

Tommy is dreaming.

He dreams that he's won the tournament, and they've handed him the belt and people are screaming his name. He dreams that Brendan's hugging him hard and so is Frank, and there in the first row are Tess and Kelly and Pop. He dreams that in the middle of all the cheering and noise he can only think of Manny - Manny and Fleischman and the guys in the desert.

He dreams that he tells them the win is for them, that all he can do is to have a good life in their honor. But the guys, they're just standing there looking pissed off, getting smaller and smaller, and then the light is too bright in his eyes and it hurts like hell. "What's your name?"somebody keeps saying to him, in that relentlessly cheerful nurse way.

"Tommy," he says, and manages not to tack on, _Now leave me the fucking hell alone_.

"Tommy what?"

"Conlon." His eyes adjust to the light a little, and there's a tall slender black woman in scrubs checking him over.

"What's the date?"

Shit, he just _had_ that. He thinks. "August first. No, September."

"You know where you are, Tommy?"

"Atlantic City. For the tournament."

"So you're a fighter, huh? Hope the other guy looks worse. You're the third one we've had in here tonight."

"I won," he tells her.

"Good for you. Looks like we're gonna find you a room in a few minutes. Now, you can't have all your family back there with you. Two or three of them at the most, and honestly, hon, that's pushin' it."

He wants to nod, but he can't manage it, his head hurts too bad. She looks at him narrowly and then raises her eyebrows in resignation and sighs. "All right then."

He loses track as somebody pushes him down the hall, the lights overhead zipping past like TOOBRIGHT normal TOOBRIGHT normal TOOBRIGHT. He's starting to feel sick, too. Then he's inside an exam room and someone blessedly turns out the overhead light, leaving on a small one, and he sighs in relief. The EMTs get him onto the bed, but he refuses to lie down. Has to say "no" twice to get them to leave him alone.

"How you doin'?" Frank asks, leaning over next to his face.

He sort of grunts in response, and then Frank's face moves, to be replaced by Kelly's, which makes him feel marginally better. "Well, John Wayne," she says tenderly, touching the side of his face where it's bruised up. "You don't feel good, do you?"

"Feel like hell," he admits. "You still got my _agua santa_?"

She frowns. "Wha- oh. On the chain? Absolutely." She pulls it out of her dress to show him and drops it back down. "I'll give it back to you when you get out of here, you're not supposed to wear jewelry in the ER."

"Okay." She's keeping it safe, that's a relief.

"Want to lie down? I think it might help."

"I _said_ fuckin' no." Why does nobody goddamn listen? If he lies down he'll lose track of where he is, might wind up back in Iraq in his head... and the guys are mad at him for taking off.

"It's okay, you don't have to. Hey, Paddy?" she says quietly. "Can you come over here a minute?" There's the familiar bulk of Pop, the smell of coffee and shaving cream, and even if Tommy's not looking at him he knows his father. "Turn your back here, if you don't mind. Tommy, can you just lean over and rest your head on his back?"

"Yeah."

"Close your eyes if that helps."

"I'm gonna puke," he informs her, and within ten seconds she's pushing a plastic bag thing into his hands.

"There you go. Get it all out, you'll feel better." She puts her cool hand on the back of his neck, holding him steady as he throws up. It's not much, it's just liquid and only a little of that. Been long enough since he ate, he guesses. He should be embarrassed at throwing up in front of Kelly, but he's not. Kelly says something about ice packs, and then there's a cold one pressed to the left side of his face and another to the back of his neck. "That help?"

"Little bit." He can't nod, that hurts. And he wants to go to sleep now.

"Head hurt?"

"Like a fuckin' sonovabitch."

"That bad, huh?"

He doesn't answer. Duh, it's obvious it's that bad, and he's starting to get antsy, starting to remember that the last time he felt like this, headache and nausea and lights too bright, it was in the desert after the bombs rained down and everybody was dead. He remembers that he'd planned to go find the other platoon, got turned around, and then the more he thought about it, the more he couldn't _be there _anymore, couldn't be there where people got killed by their own, where any Marine might drop a bomb on him or throw a grenade or stab him through the heart, you can't fucking_ trust _anybody these days, and he just had to_ be somewhere else_.

"Still hurt?" She's adjusted the way the ice pack sits, and the only thing different is that his head hurts worse regardless of where the damn ice pack is.

"Goddamn asshole motherfucker's wearin' _stripes_."

The broad back he's leaning his head on, _oh yeah that's Pop_, starts to shake. "Stop it," Tommy says irritably. "Stop moving."

"Tommy just made a joke," Pop says, probably to Kelly.

"Did not," he denies. He was serious. It's a pissed-off, bullheaded, stick-up-his-ass, fucking idiot asshole sonovabitch of an officer of a headache. There is nothing fucking funny about it.

He dozes there on Pop's back for what feels like a few minutes, and then there's some damn nurse person back in the room, making him go through the whole stupid "what day is it" list of questions again, making him stand up on one foot and then the other, and then gives him three words to repeat. Then she says she's going to take Tommy somewhere else so he can take some sort of computer test to check out whether his brain still works. Which he probably fails, he can't tell, and then he's back in the room. He remembers the three words when the nurse asks him for them again, and he repeats the numbers she tells him backwards as asked, easy. The nurse types notes into the computer, gets him a fresh bag to throw up in just in case, and brings him a hospital gown. "Looks like we're going to admit you," she says. "Strip down to underwear and put that on. I'm going to go get the doctor." She pulls the privacy curtain and goes out the door.

He's about to protest, but Frank gives him the evil eye, and because he's tired, he does it. Not like he's got a lot to take off anyway. Frank helps him put the stupid thing on and lie down on the bed, and Frank opens the curtain. Now Tommy notices that Kelly and Pop are gone, and Brendan and Tess are there instead. "Where's Kelly?" he wants to know.

"Waiting room," Brendan says.

Tess leans over and kisses the side of his head. "Really proud of you," she says. "Listen, Kelly and I are going to go get some rest so we can drive back tomorrow, and you guys can sleep in the back seat of the minivan. I'm pretty sure you're not up to interviews for at least a couple of days."

"Yeah, fuck the interviews," he says. "Love you, Tessie."

"Love you, too, honey," she says.

"Can I go to sleep now?" he asks, and doesn't wait for the answer as the world swallows him up.

* * *

Frank is worried. Brendan can tell by the look on his face – he seems calm, but Brendan knows Frank. He's holding off on pitching a snit-fit, Italian style, so he won't spook Tommy. Every minute that passes without a doctor in the room is making Frank madder, and Brendan can tell Frank's right on the verge of going out to the nurses' station with the intent of ripping somebody a new one.

It's a good thing that the doctor shows up right before Frank's control breaks. He wakes Tommy, goes through the same "what's-your-name, what-day-is-it" oral quiz Tommy's now taken five times, checks Tommy's balance and reflexes and eyes, orders a CT scan, and logs on to a computer to see what the post-injury computer test thing shows. "So _what _happened, now?" Dr. Carter, who's younger than Brendan, asks.

"That big fight tournament down at Boardwalk Hall this weekend?" Frank says, eyebrows raised. "This is the winner. Took a vicious kick to the head."

"Oh oh oh,_ right._ Yeah, the fight." Dr. Carter looks at his electronic clipboard and then back up with an apologetic smile. "I have no social life, sorry, I can't keep track of stuff." He eyes Tommy, who looks belligerently sleepy. "Winner? Hope the other guy looks worse."

"Other guy's probably across the hall," Frank says dryly. "Having his liver function checked."

"Huh," the doctor says. "Well. Anyway, my preliminary guess is that everybody who's seen him up till now is right and this is a mild to moderate concussion. We'll run the scan to see if there's any bleeding or dangerous swelling in the brain, but I suspect we'd be seeing drastically worsening symptoms if that were the case."

"You gonna admit him?" Pop asks.

"Thought we did already," Dr. Carter says. "Yeah, chart says we did. Just staying here in the ER for 8 hours minimum, for observation. Okay, so the nurse will be by every fifteen minutes for the next hour or so to wake him up and talk to him, check his alertness, and then every half an hour for the next couple of hours after that. Then once an hour until tomorrow morning. I know it's frustrating, but there's a reason we keep asking the same questions – if the responses change that's a good indication that the injury is serious. Somebody will come get him for the CT scan shortly, and depending on what that says I may order him some meds. Just need to know exactly what's going on before I prescribe."

"Thanks," Frank says, and Dr. Carter nods before going out to the nurse's station. "Jeez," he mutters under his breath.

"Look, why don't you go get some rest," Brendan says to Frank. "If he can't do interviews, and I really think that the way he's talking right now, interviews would be a_ total _disaster, you'll have to do 'em."

"You can do 'em with me," Frank says. "On my own I'm boring, and I'm not willing to share intimate family details. But if you're willing to sacrifice some blood to the sharks and toss them a good story or two, we can keep the sharks off _this_ guy."

"He does kinda look like chum at the moment," Brendan admits. And there's very little he wouldn't do for his brother; interviews are a piece of cake.

Frank leaves, to make a short statement to the press about Tommy's current condition and that he probably will not be available for interviews for at least a week, and Pop comes back to the dim exam room. Tommy is dozing again, fortunately on the bed this time.

Pop and Brendan stare at each other for a moment or two, and then Pop's gaze goes past Brendan to Tommy sleeping, and one tiny little part of Brendan waves his fists and shrieks, "_Me, what about me? I'm still here!_"

But while he's staring at one son, Pop says to the other, "Now I can say to you all the good stuff I didn't say to you when you won the other time, because now I don't have to worry about _him_ gettin' his feelings hurt when I tell you I'm proud of you. Because I am. You got brains and heart, and balls, Brendan, and I'm so proud of you I could just bust my buttons. You're tough as old boots, and you're the hell of a fighter, and on top a' that you are a good man. You are a good man, and you sure as hell didn't get it from me, and that just makes me prouder."

The part of Brendan's heart that's been crabbed up all these years, hurting because Pop seemed so much happier with Tommy, was so proud of Tommy – that part of his heart unfurls and stretches out, like the Grinch's heart on Christmas Day, and he says what he should already have said, already have done. "I forgive you, Pop," he says, and he means it. Between the two of them, the painful past is buried, covered by a fresh page ready to have love written on it.

* * *

Kelly is asleep, dreaming that she is in a train compartment with Tommy, going somewhere with green mountains whipping past the train windows. He smiles, and reaches to kiss her, and she can feel herself dissolving in the sweet heat of it...

And her phone rings. She'd taken it to bed with her, just in case, almost expecting a call at some point, and the noise jolts her into instant alertness. She sits up and answers.

"Can you get down here?" Brendan asks her, without even saying hello. "No, don't worry – it's just that every time they wake him up and ask him questions to check his neuro function, he wants to know where you are. _Every time_. He's driving me flippin' nuts."

She's already out of bed. "You know, if I do come down there and you leave, he's gonna start asking where _you_ are."

"Yeah, but then it'll be your problem," Brendan says, and she huffs indignantly before realizing he's teasing her. "I think it's because you're a nurse, maybe? He figures you know your way around the hospital. I think being here is skeeving him out. He hated hospitals when we were kids."

"Maybe so." She pulls out the jeans from the other day and a fresh tee-shirt. That's the last clean one she brought, so she hopes it will do. "Okay, I'll be there when I can."

Brendan has to come out to the waiting room to get her, and she tells him to get some rest. He's going to do interviews with Frank tomorrow on Tommy's behalf, he says, and he'll drive back home in Frank's car with Adam the intern late in the day. He reaches down to hug her. "So glad you're here to help out."

"Yes." If he didn't look so tired she'd tackle him right now about messing with her love life. But the taxi's waiting outside. "Get some rest."

When she walks into Tommy's room, he's sleeping on the bed and Paddy's asleep in the chair, arms crossed on his chest. She pulls up the other hard chair to the side of the bed and sits on it, leaning her head on the mattress, planning to get some shuteye herself until they come wake Tommy again. She takes another look at him under the white blanket and realizes they've managed to get him into a hospital gown, and her jaw drops at the utter incongruity of it.

He looks _sexy as hell_, even asleep with his face all bruised up and most of his tats showing and his arm muscles too big for that stupid gown. He looks the opposite of sick; he looks like an angel with a black eye, sweet and tough in equal measures, healthy and completely able to deal out fists and mayhem, if necessary.

Damn, she is a lucky woman.

* * *

Tommy is dreaming again. Or hallucinating, he's not sure which. Drifting around in his own mind, that much he knows.

Manny is talking to him. "Where's my _agua santa_, uh? Thought you was keepin' it for me. And you not called Pilar in three weeks, how you gonna take care of my girl if you don't call her?"

Tommy tells him, "I'll call Pilar tomorrow, check on her. She was fine last time we talked. Hey, I still got your chain, or anyway my girl's got it, holdin' it for me."

"I saw her, 'mano. Green dress with no back on it, alla way down to her ass?" Manny makes an approving, lascivious sort of noise. "_Mmp._ _Nalgas finas, _too."

"_Hey_. Hands off, that's mine. And you're married."

"I'm dead, dumbass. I'm talkin' to you in your head. You got lucky with her." This is the thread of an old, much-repeated conversation; both of them hold firm opinions on the joys of having your hands all over a sweet round girly ass. Manny tends to refer to this as _suerte que desborda __dos manos_, "luck running out of both hands," or just "getting lucky" - not quite the same as the American phrase, and not a Mexican one either, just a Manny phrase. It's funny, Manny cusses just fine in English, but when he talks about sex, the dirty words are always in Spanish, so now Tommy knows about six different Mexican slang words for penis.

Tommy won't deny that the "luck overflowing both hands" phrase has been in his mind to some degree lately – and he does feel lucky, too. He rolls his eyes at Manny, but he can't quite keep the smile off his face.

"This is the real thing," Manny says to him. "I know you, I know that face you used to get when you were hangin' at my house watching Pilar make tamales, watchin' Little Man play on the floor... like you were missin' something you thought you were never gonna have. Not jealous exactly, but like it. Well, you have that good thing now, yeah?"

Tommy nods, feeling warmth in his chest the way he does when he thinks about Kelly, about having her around all the time, her and her boys. Having a family. Then he thinks about luck running out of both hands when he's got them on Kelly's ass, and the warmth moves lower.

"Aaaah, you're embarrassed," Manny says. "Your ears got red. Not as bad as the time when you heard me talkin' dirty to Pilar on the phone and asked me to translate, but they're pretty red, man."

Tommy remembers that. He'd heard Manny say, in a warm, affectionate voice, something like, "_Mi amor, mi vida... cuando llegue a la casa voy a comer tu panocha dulce_," and had figured that Manny was merely looking forward to getting home and having some of Pilar's excellent food for dinner, eating something you'd put on a plate. He'd asked what was for dinner, and Manny had laughed nonstop for three minutes – and then told him.

"Holy shit," he says now, because thinking about Kelly and her_ panocha_ usually makes him hard as a rock. "Knock it off, man. I'm not embarrassed, but talkin' about it is gonna give me a massive boner. So quit, I'm in the fucking hospital."

Manny gives him a sly grin. "You know, I always told you – you like it now, you'll learn to love it later. When you're with the right girl, you'll wanna have your mouth on her 24/7."

"Okay, so you were right about that," Tommy says, trying to get sex off his brain. "Now. _Shut. Up_."

"No, you listen, okay? I gotta tell you somethin', and you gotta tell Pilar. Okay? It's important. You kinda reminded me." Tommy nods. "Okay, you gotta tell her that I love her forever. And I want her to be happy. But she's a woman who was made for love, and I want her heart to be open. If there's another guy out there who wants to love her, I mean really love her,_ really_ love her, she should grab that and not be sorry about it. She shouldn't be thinkin' about me, that I wouldn't want that for her. I want her to... to _live_ her life, not just get through it." Manny looks off to the side, and then he sighs. "Tell her?"

"I will. I promise. Manny? You know I got my brother back?"

"I know," Manny says, and gives Tommy a sweet, sad smile. "Don't feel bad for me, be happy for you."

"Thank you, man."

"_Hermano que nunca tuve_," Manny says with great warmth. "Take care, man." And then he's gone, fading into the too-bright glare of fluorescent lights overhead, and the nurse is asking him once a-fucking-_gain _what day it is and what city they're in.

Once the nurse is gone, he asks the shape in the seat by the bed, "Where's Kelly?" He's blinded now that the lights are off again and he's in the dark, but when he went to sleep that was Brendan there in the chair.

"I'm right here, baby," the shape says, and it_ is_ her.

He sighs with relief and pleasure. "Come up here with me, there's room."

"No," she says, but she puts her hand to his cheek. "That's too tough on the nurses, two people on an exam bed. You feeling better?"

"Little bit." The headache is not as bad now. The room being dark helps. The smell of her perfume, that helps too.

"You just rest," she says, and starts stroking his hair. That feels really nice. Really comforting.

He drifts off again, and somehow he's back in the desert again, watching the ragged photo of Karen Fleischman and her beautiful red hair float on dusty wind, right over her dead husband's body, past Faw's headless body, across a collection of legs that could have been anyone's, anonymous in desert cammies and boots, and off into nowhere. He shouts, but no one answers. He shakes his head, and the entire fucking world spins: sand, buildings, bodies, sky, sandwallhelmetskydustsand, and he falls over. Gets back up. Where's the other platoon? That way, or _that _way? He doesn't know, not anymore. _Manny, where the fuck-hell are you? Because this can't be you, because this body in pieces cannot be you, not my other brother._

He picks a direction and starts walking, but the hairs rise up on the back of his neck so he turns around, and all the guys, all of them dead, are lined up behind him, ghosts following him no matter which way he goes. They don't clank like Marley's chain, but they rustle and clomp and chant, just as if they weren't missing pieces of their bodies. Just as if they were on some five-mile PT run. He shouts, "Leave me the fucking hell alone! Go away!" but they stand still and stare, even the ones who don't have heads, somehow they're staring too, and then there's a small hand shaking his shoulder and a voice soft and low and womanly in his ear.

"You're safe. You're whole, you're safe. I'm here and you're fine. You don't have to do a thing but rest."

He's covered in sweat, he can feel it, and he's shaking hard, so he grabs her shoulder. She's real. He puts his other hand into her hair, soft and curly, and she leans closer so he pulls her in to kiss her, wanting to make sure he's not still in hell. He's pretty sure he's not, now.

Then he lets his head fall back onto the pillow. There's a faint whiff of coffee and shaving cream in the room, _Pop that's Pop, he's here too_, and he wants to know if he's gonna have to suffer like this for the rest of his fucking life.

So he asks.

* * *

Tommy's had a nightmare there in the hospital bed, quieter than his usual ones he had staying at Paddy's house – no yelling, no thrashing around, just a couple of moans and some shaking. Paddy watches, concerned, and when that little Kelly girl throws a glance over her shoulder at him and then soothes Tommy awake and out of his bad dream of the desert, he sits back a little. She can take care of it. She talks to him, calming him down, letting Tommy pull her in for a kiss.

And then Tommy asks. "Do they ever go away, Pop? The guys. The guys who are dead, do they ever start leaving you alone? Do they ever not hate you?"

Paddy can't answer. He doesn't know for sure. He doesn't want to talk about it, either – to anyone, much less his son, and still less his son's little girlfriend. He shakes his head a little.

She looks at him over her shoulder, waiting. Looking impatient. After three minutes go by without anyone saying anything, Tommy sighs heavily and lets his head flop back onto the pillow.

That little Kelly girl – he can't think of her any other way, even though he knows she's a nurse and has been behaving like one all evening – gets out of the chair. She taps him on the arm and points to the door. She opens it, goes out, and then looks back at him like, _Well? Aren't you coming?_

So he follows her out.

She starts right in with the accusations. "He was having nightmares and flashbacks when? When he first came to stay with you after all that crap in Iraq, when he came back to Pittsburgh?"

Paddy nods. Of course. Men who've lived through battle tell their war stories one way or another: in their dreams, in the bar, through their fists.

"What about when he got out of the brig, what about then?" she wants to know, and her voice is starting to get an edge on it.

"Then too. Nightmares mostly."

"And what did you do?" she asks, challenging.

"Do? Nothin'. Nothin' _to_ do. He had to deal with it."

"You mean all the time he was staying with you, you could hear him having nightmares, and you never did anything about it? You didn't go in and comfort him?" She's got her arms crossed and her pretty little doll mouth compressed, and she looks mad. Her voice is quiet, as it should be in a hospital late at night, but she is _mad_.

He doesn't know what to say. She probably does not understand that a man doesn't do that sort of thing for another man, no matter what they are to each other. You let the other guy alone to deal with his own problems. Now, a woman can comfort a man – but not in front of another man, not in public. He shrugs a little, perplexed. "He's a grown man."

"He's_ your son_," she says, intense.

"Yeah, but he's a grown man, and a Marine. He can take care of himself." Paddy's trying to explain, but she's still not having any. She's still quiet, but vehement.

"You mean there's some kind of a damn _Man Code_ that keeps you from bein' good to each other?" she demands, and her accent has gone hillbilly. "That is a load of bullshit. If you didn't know each other, I could see that. If you hated each other, or if you weren't both Marines, or if you both hadn't been through combat – " She breaks off and exhales through her nose, even madder. "But you're family. And you of all people should know what he's been through, and how hard is it to just put your hand on his shoulder and tell him to wake up, that he's safe? That's too much trouble?

Paddy does not want to explain to her that he knows how deep Tommy's anger runs. That on top of the man code, which she is right about even though she's scathing about it, Tommy has twice already mocked his father for being soft with him, and his dignity won't stand it again. He struggles for words, but because he's not answering, she gets madder and her voice gets shaky.

"I don't care what the Man Code says, you're his goddamn father, and he needs you! Even if he says he doesn't. Even if he_ hates_ needing you, he still needs you. He needs to see that just living through things is a kind of victory, even if you limp out the other side of hell naked and missing an eye and a rib and both hands. So _grow a fuckin' pair_, and go back in there and answer the hard questions. You owe him that. I don't care if it's tough on you, _man up_."

Paddy manages to close his mouth after listening to this little speech, full of rude inappropriate language and hitting on his vulnerabilities as a father, and then he says, "That's no way for a lady to talk."

"Oh, _fuck _being a lady!" And she actually stomps that little foot of hers, in its flat green shoe, as his mouth falls open again. What a little madam. He would never have tolerated that kind of language from his wife, and –

"If being a lady means you let people that you love get hurt when you could have stopped it, and that you're scared of what people think of you, and that you'd rather talk nice and pretty than tell the damn truth, then I ain't a goddamn lady! And I will never ever be one!" She's spitting all this out through tears, crying in little gasps, and he truly doesn't know what to say now. "And you might not be a lady, but you care more about lookin' like a man to other people than _bein'_ one, from what I can tell. Goddamn it!" She bursts into a crying jag where she can hardly breathe, and his first thought is that if she's this passionate and emotional, then he sure hopes Tommy's getting the benefit of that in bed.

His second thought is that, to some degree, she's right. That he does care, has always cared, more about his idea of being a man, looking like a man to other people, than about the people a man has in his charge.

And then he remembers that about thirty-six hours ago, Tommy asked him to look after his girl, to take care of this young mother with a heart for other people's troubles, who's so strong for her sons, and just because Paddy doesn't like the way she's challenging him he's stopped looking after her in order to defend himself. Which is her point – that a man gives himself in the service of those he's supposed to protect, women and children first, and he's failed at that.

Until now. He has a choice.

He reaches out and puts his arms around her, tentatively, expecting her to fling his arms away from her, but instead, she rests her head on his shoulder and just cries. She's trying to stay quiet, he can tell that much, but she's really given up to it, out of control, for a few minutes. And then it's over, she's hiccuping and he's offering her his handkerchief, patting her back. "There now. There. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you're right, I should have... helped him. Even if he didn't want me to."

"I'm on _your _side on this, you know," she says, fiercely. "I know you want your son back, it's all over you, and him pretending you don't matter is complete BS. Don't let him tell you different, you stick it out with him. It's why he asked you about that stuff in the first place. _You matter_. And don't duck your chances, go talk to him. I'll be out here, unless you need me."

He pulls back, feeling a little stunned, and just nods at her. She's such a ferocious little thing. Strong in her own way.

He opens the door, walks to the chair beside the bed and sits in it, not missing the way Tommy's eyes find him in the dim light as soon as he comes into the room. "So you wanna know," he says, hearing his own voice full of gravel and regret. "No. They never go away. They sit there in your head. You forget them, and then you remember. You remember the way they looked drinking beer, laughing, alive and capable and full of power. You remember the way they looked with the shit scared out of them, running like scared animals, just like you. And then you remember the way they looked dead. Like so much beef on the butcher slab. Or worse. They never go away, son."

Tommy just looks at him, eyes open and dark like he himself is the Frog Prince's well, all his father's words falling right in and being swallowed up. Becoming part of him.

"So you can drink to forget them. So they can fall back into the pool of alcohol in your belly and just disappear for awhile. Or you can take painkillers instead, or spend all your time wearing your body out with exercise or sex or work. You can't make them go away, but you can shut them up. Shut them out for a little piece of time. You can shut out your own fear and your guilt. For a little while." Paddy is silent for a moment, looking into his son's eyes and seeing him as a comrade, a brother in arms. Then he sees Tommy as a little boy, listening to his pop's stories and admonitions and advice, taking every single word to heart.

And then he sees his younger son, the one he'd hoped would be his better self, as he is now: a wounded warrior, dragging himself out of hell with a limp and one eye, totally naked and unembarrassed by his need and his humanity, reaching for Paddy's help. Still trying, always trying.

"Or," he goes on, "you look at all the faces and you feel every bit of the loss. You acknowledge the missing-pieces feeling you have. And the feeling that you shoulda done it better. Or different. You tell 'em you're sorry. You make your peace, one day at a time. One face at a time. You don't forget. You remember, and you forgive. Them, and God, and yourself."

Mary Rose's face comes into his head while he's looking at their son, the one who looks like his mother, and it is to her as well as to Tommy that he speaks now. "You do the brave thing and face them all. You tell 'em you fucked up. You tell 'em you're sorry. You wish them well, and when they show up in your head again you tell 'em again. See the best parts of them, and of you, and wish both of you peace. This is the courageous way, and I want you to take it. I came to it late. You're braver than me, you oughta pick it up pretty fast."

It is the first time that Paddy has put these thoughts into words, even in his head.

"I love you, Pop," Tommy says. "I don't forgive you for Mom, but I forgive you for me."

"I'll take that for now," Paddy says, and he reaches for Tommy's hand. Holds it until Tommy goes to sleep, and Tommy's girl comes in and puts her arm around his shoulders sideways in a little gust of her perfume, and tells him he did good.


	53. Chapter 53: As You Wish

**Ch 63 As You Wish**

**A/N: This one is pretty much all cotton candy. I do not apologize. Also, it gets a little NSFW. Probably a lot of the chapters from here on out will be. (Did I hear cheering?) **

**And The Princess Bride is probably the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT, you know, a mutton-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich, when the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe. They're so perky. I love that. **

Tommy rips open the Fed Ex envelope and stares at the stack of paperwork that falls out of it. "Jesus."

"Yeah," Brendan says ruefully. It looks familiar, the panicked_ oh-my-God, I-gotta-fill-all-this-out_ look on Tommy's face – he remembers the feeling from two years ago. "I'll help. Frank'll help. And you want_ this_, anyway." He reaches over into the stack of crap and plucks out the cashier's check, handing it to his brother. "There ya go. Tell you what, you grab your shoes and we'll go stick it in the bank right now, okay? We can talk about investments and stuff later, but you want that sucker safely in the bank." It's Thursday afternoon, and he's just gotten home after some interminable new-school-board-policy meeting with the other teachers.

"Investments," Tommy says, almost bitterly.

"Yeah. You know. Stock market, bonds." Tommy makes a face, and Brendan explains further. "Trust funds for the Fernandez kids. Stuff like that."

Tommy looks at him suspiciously, sidelong, and says, "Like I don't know you sent Pilar money yourself. Like I don't know they already got trust funds."

Brendan feels the blush spread across his face. "Well. It mattered a lot to you. So, after I set up funds for Emily and Rosie and paid off the house... anyway. You can do whatever you want now."

Tommy nods. Looks more closely at the check, just stares at it for a minute that stretches into two and then three, and it's making Brendan jumpy. "What are you thinkin'?" he asks. Sometimes Tommy is as difficult to read as a newspaper in Chinese. "Got any plans for spending that, other than sharing it with your buddy's family?"

"Want a truck," Tommy admits almost in embarrassment. "And a place of my own. And..." he trails off. Brendan bites his lip and doesn't jump in. He does that to Tommy too often. "And I thought maybe you – "

"Do not even _think _about trying to pay me rent. I won't take it."

"No, I mean... I was thinkin' we... maybe you and me could set up a foundation." At Brendan's uncomprehending stare he adds, "You know. For victims of domestic violence. Name it after Mom, something like that."

Brendan sucks in a breath. How has he not even thought of this? Taking care of his own family, he guesses. He's also been spreading money around a little bit at a time, wherever he sees it needs to go – a kid at school with holey shoes or not enough cash for lunch, a project at church. And there is still a need for that kind of charity, but this... "That is a really awesome idea," he says, softly. "I wish I'd thought of it."

"Well, chip in some on it then, if you want," Tommy says. "Have to talk to somebody who can set this thing up. And decide exactly how it should work, 'cause I don't know what's best."

Brendan nods, and keeps nodding. There's an ache at the back of his throat. His baby brother, big fat check in hand, the one he's worked so hard for... the first thing Tommy has thought of is making things better for other people. All of a sudden he's on the verge of just losing it. "Love you, man," he says softly.

Tommy looks up, and in the clear light of autumn afternoon, his eyes are a beautiful pewter-blue with a tinge of green, soft and open. Mom's eyes. "Love you too," he says, equally softly.

When they're in Brendan's car, headed for the bank, Brendan's thinking about how this week has gone. There's been a certain relaxation of routine for Tommy and a resumption of it for him, what with teacher workdays starting, so he's not really seen much of his brother except at night. And the concussion seems to have made Tommy drop off to sleep at a moment's notice; one minute he's watching baseball on TV with Brendan, the next he's conked out and snoring. Tess says he's like that during the day too, napping a lot, and Kelly says that's normal for concussion patients.

But the other weird thing about Tommy this week is that he's been openly emotional. When they'd gotten home late Monday afternoon, he'd made an absolute beeline for the kids, all four of them, and let them pile all over him on the couch. "Careful, not too rough," Tess had warned them all, but there was all kinds of hugging going on, and the sound of children's laughter.

And Tuesday night, when Tommy had firmly nixed the idea of going out to a restaurant, Tess had gone out of her way to make the celebratory dinner he had mentioned wanting: bacon cheeseburgers, beer, and ice cream. After dinner, Tess had set a bowl of peach ice cream down in front of Tommy and one in front of Brendan, and first Tommy's face had gone blank – and then he'd started smirking, like Tess had inadvertently done something hilarious that he nevertheless couldn't laugh at, and then when Brendan had poked his knee under the table, he cracked up, laughing uncontrollably. Tommy had laughed so hard and for so long that his ice cream had half melted by the time he stopped. Brendan, a little annoyed, had finally demanded that Tommy tell him what was the matter, and Tommy had beckoned him to the back door.

"So what the hell was that?" Brendan had been completely bumfuzzled, Tommy laughing like that for no apparent reason. "You said you wanted a bacon cheeseburger, a beer, and peach ice cream as soon as you were done with the tournament. You said it, I heard you, Tess made it happen for you."

"And it was sweet of her. But I didn't mean literal peach ice cream," Tommy had said, grinning, but with his ears bright red in embarrassment.

"Well, what in the hell _did _you mean when you said you wanted peach ice cream?" Brendan had demanded, confused and annoyed and starting to wonder whether Tommy's sustained some sort of irreversible brain injury.

But Tommy leaned over to him and said, under his breath, "Pussy. I meant _pussy_, okay? Somewhere inside I'm still seventeen. Let it go. Once I stop laughing I'll be fine." And he'd gone off into one final fit of chuckles before going back inside to hug Tess and thank her for dinner.

Brendan had immediately pulled out his iPhone and checked Urban Dictionary to see if "peach ice cream" was a pop culture term for cunnilingus, or for female genitalia, and he'd just been oblivious (it wouldn't be the first time). It wasn't. So he'd shrugged, and gone back inside as well to eat his own literal peach ice cream and cultivate a healthy desire for his wife – as well as to speculate, fruitlessly, on the subject of Tommy's sex life and wonder why on earth no girlfriend has come out of the woodwork.

Yesterday, Tommy had done an interview with ESPN, the network actually sending a reporter by Brendan's house rather than asking Tommy to fly up to Bristol, CT to film it in the SportsCenter studio. Brendan doubts they would have done that, except for the concussion, and Frank agrees, and Tommy says he doesn't care except that he's starting to be glad he took a knee to the head, insofar as it's gotten him out of most of the interviews he'd been dreading. He's still reticent on the subject of their father and childhood, and still closemouthed on the subject of his military experience, except that he will immediately deny any wrongdoing or mistake on the part of the Marine Corps with regards to his court-martial. "The Corps has high standards," Tommy tells the ESPN guy, "and they still mean a lot to me. Just because I couldn't hold to them doesn't mean they're unreasonable."

And this strikes Brendan as being one of the most sensible, honest, honorable things to have ever come out of his little brother's mouth. He should probably give Tommy more credit for maturity than he does, the peach ice cream fiasco notwithstanding.

Tommy's put off every other reporter, whether print of television, who's called either him or Frank, saying that he could not possibly think of doing an interview with anyone else, not with this concussion. Frank's done the bulk of his interview work for him, as a matter of fact, helping Tommy answer written-format questions and such. Tommy's grumbled and complained of his head hurting and gotten out of as much of it as he can squeak out of, but he's answered at least some of them, a lot less evasive than he's been in the past.

Frank says all kinds of endorsement deals are coming across his desk for Tommy, from RevGear wraps and gloves to TapouT clothing, to Men's Health magazine wanting him for the cover. Good endorsements. Tommy says he'll think about them next week when his head isn't so fuzzy.

Kelly's been by every evening after picking up the boys from daycare, to check on Tommy's physical condition and bring him things – like a pan of brownies with extra chocolate chips, or fresh blueberries from the farmer's market – and to point her finger at him and tell him repeatedly and very firmly that he is _not _to exert himself. He wants to recover quickly, doesn't he? Well then, he has to rest now and follow doctor's orders. No video games, no 3D movies, no running, no weightlifting, and for God's sake no sparring.

Oddly enough, he seems to be listening to her and staying mostly sedentary while he recovers, as Dr. Carter said he should. The extra sleep seems to be helping – the headaches have abated, and he's far less grouchy than he'd been in the hospital. Brendan suspects he's milking the fuzzy-head symptoms, in order to put off any interview or difficult decision he possibly can.

So today, Thursday, after they've deposited the check and set up Internet banking for Tommy, they drop by Frank's gym to give him his 15% trainer-manager fee check. "Gotta give Pop some," Tommy says. "He was part of this, couldn't have done it without 'im."

Brendan nods. "Yep. And now how about that truck? Or did you want to start looking for a place first?" Tommy, riding shotgun in Brendan's two-year-old Camry, is quiet. "C'mon, Tom, what do you want to do right now? We could go see my financial adviser if you like. Name's Marie, she's a nice lady and I'm sure she'd do a good job for you. Or it might be better for you to find someone _you_ like. Or did you want to..."

"Can I... listen, I know we said I'd be moving on after Sparta, but is it okay if I stay another month maybe? I'm not sure what I wanna do."

"_Hell_ yeah. You stay as long as you want. Tess already told me she was dreading you leaving."

Tommy laughs. "I really don't wanna be living in your guest room when I'm sixty. Nah, I'll look for a place soon. But, you know... I might take a rest, hang out with the kids some. Take 'em to Hershey Park or something – it's open on weekends in the fall, right?"

"I think so. They'd love that." And maybe it would be a good time to ask Tommy about that other thing, too. "And I was thinkin', you know, if you don't mind... maybe you could come talk to my wrestlers some afternoon."

Tommy gives him a skeptical look. "About high school wrestling? About believing in your dreams and the value of hard work, that kind of thing?" Brendan's mouth is open to say _Yeah, that's what I mean_, when Tommy goes on. "I don't do that motivational-speaking shit. But yeah, I'll come talk to 'em. Let 'em ask me questions and stuff, I don't mind that. But don't call the TV stations or anything, or let it get out. I'm sick of publicity crap already. I'll just show up one day when you and me decide would be good, and you don't tell anybody ahead of time."

"Good plan. Well, I'll have to tell the principal to get permission for you to be there, but he's a fan, and he's gotten to be kind of a personal friend too, so it won't be a problem. Maybe you'd give him an autograph." Brendan's already talked to Dan Zito about the possibility anyway, and Zito's excited about it.

"One guy, sure. I just hate the crowds and shit."

"Got it. You gonna fight some more?" Brendan asks. He's been wanting to ask this since last week, since he's torn on what he wants the answer to be. He guesses the best answer will depend on what Tommy wants to do, not what he thinks he _has _to do.

"I dunno. Maybe. Can't do it forever. So if I'm gonna, the time is now."

"True." Brendan knows that if UFC calls Tommy, he'll only fight a couple of events a year, for big money. He ought to be a big draw – Sparta pulls a lot of TV viewership, and who wouldn't want to see the winner in the cage again? Not to mention Brendan's heard all the hype, seen the kids at school wearing Sparta tee-shirts, heard the screams of his brother's name, seen all the girls at the arena wearing camo "Tommy Girl" tank tops – that's popularity. That's Big Money Walkin'. He'd like to warn Tommy off the kind of girl who'd only want him because he's rich and famous, who'd want only the fighter part of him, but he doesn't think Tommy would be that dumb.

Why_ isn't _Tommy dating that hot Jen girl?

He thinks Tess is nuts to suggest they set Tommy up with Kelly. Things just don't happen that way, and although he'd love for Kelly to be his little sister for real, he just doesn't have faith that Tommy is at a level of maturity to where he'd A), be a good husband and stepfather, or B) even want what it is that Kelly has. He knows they like each other, sure. Clearly there's affection between them. Part C is, would Kelly want Tommy? He doesn't think so, and friend setups almost never work anyway.

"Guess I'll start looking into pickups first," Tommy says. "Take me a few days, maybe a week, to narrow down what I want, and then I'll go look at them in person. You got a subscription to _Consumer Reports_?"

Brendan blinks. "Yeah, I do. Online."

"You don't have to sound so surprised," Tommy says sourly, and then he chucks Brendan on the bicep. "I'm not that dumb."

"No. I'm just surprised that you actually listened to me for once. And hey – are you gonna be able to go to that Pirates-Cubs game with me and Pop Saturday? I was gonna leave after school tomorrow, be back Sunday afternoon. We could stay the night in our old room, Pop said. Or get a hotel, either way."

Tommy hunches his shoulders up around his ears, like he's cold. "Listen... Bren... I'm not sure I can manage that drive. It's so fucking long, and every time I think about it I get the willies about bein' in a car for four hours, watching stuff go past me. Then it's another four hours back. And bright lights are just murder on me right now." He shifts the dark sunglasses on his face.

"Yeah, okay. Probably overly optimistic of me to have gone ahead and bought tickets before thinking about you maybe gettin' hurt. I just wanted us to celebrate, you know, do something good together." He's expected this ever since hearing about the restrictions on Tommy's activity until cleared by the doctor, but he's still a little disappointed.

"Yeah, the Conlon boys tearin' up the town," Tommy says bitterly, and bites his lip. "Sorry. No, it was a _good_ idea. Maybe in a month, or at least a couple of weeks. Looks like the Pirates are gonna make the playoffs this year, so maybe then. If you can get tickets."

It's more than the drive and the stadium lights, Brendan thinks. True, Tommy's still recovering from the concussion, but if he wanted to go nothing would stop him. "What's goin' on with you and Pop?"

Tommy is quiet for a few moments, and Brendan just waits. Tommy shakes his head a little. "Him and me, well... I think we're okay. It's just... him and Mom. I don't understand it, how if you love somebody you could put her through hell like that."

Brendan thinks about putting Tess through hell, making her worry about him while he was fighting. But it's not the same as what Pop did to Mom. "I know. Shit, Tommy, I don't get it either."

"_Fuck_. And she still loved him, after all that shit. She couldn't live with him anymore, but she loved him. Even at the end."

Any mention of Mom's death makes Brendan feel sick with guilt and loss for a moment or two before he gets hold of himself, and it takes the car behind him honking to make him realize the light's turned green. "She toldja that, huh."

"Yeah. And a helluva lot else that no seventeen-year-old boy should ever hear outta the mouth of his mother." There's a pause, while Brendan wonders what in the hell that could be and decides he really doesn't want to know – and then Tommy says, "Kevin says I shouldn't worry about bein' like Pop. That I know better, and I can get help if I need it. And he says I should forgive him. But I just... I can't let go of it. Still dream about him hitting her, sometimes. Not being able to make it stop."

"Me too," Brendan confesses. "I think both of us have learned, have _had_ to learn, how to redirect our anger."

"You sound like a shrink."

"I teach teenagers. You gotta be one, halfway." He's teasing, a little, but it works.

Tommy gives him a little smile as they're pulling into the driveway. "Listen, I need to talk to you about somethin'."

"Can it wait? I gotta take Emily to karate class. And when I get back I gotta run with the wrestling team." Brendan checks his watch. Crap, he's running behind – he should be leaving with his daughter right now.

"I guess. It's not exactly an emergency." But Tommy frowns. "I shoulda done this already this week. Hell, shoulda done it weeks ago."

Emily comes out the front door, already dressed in her _gi_, gym bag ready. "Daddy, you were almost late! We have to go."

"Climb in, sweetie." To Tommy he says, "Well, tonight then. After the kids are in bed." And then he forgets about it, until he's in bed with Tess, trying to remember all the stuff he has to do tomorrow before he leaves the house, if he's going to drive to Pittsburgh right after school. _Oh yeah, that thing Tommy wanted to talk to me about. Have to sit him down on Sunday when I get back... maybe in the treehouse..._

* * *

Friday morning Tess kisses her husband goodbye, a little more thoroughly than she normally would because she won't see him for a couple of days. "Hey," he says, holding her close and giving her an extra kiss or four, "if Tommy changes his mind before 3 pm, tell him to text me. I can still come back here and pick him up if he decides he wants to go to the game."

"I'll tell him," Tess says, and waves as he goes out in his nice khakis, the ones that hang so beautifully off his butt. She sighs a little. It'll be boring without him home. Nice for him to have some fun time with Paddy, but she'll miss him. It's rare that they've spent any time apart at all, since they've been married. She sighs and goes back into the kitchen to clean up a little before she goes to her two Friday classes. School starts next week for the kids, and she's ready for that.

Tommy's been sleeping late this week, well past his usual 5 to 5:30 wakeup time, and she's been letting him sleep until she has to leave for the community college. He offered to take care of the kids, at least during this gap week between the day college classes started and the day the local schools start. She figures the late sleeping won't last – once he really starts feeling better, nobody will be able to keep him in bed. _Except Kelly maybe_, she thinks, and snorts. Tess is intensely curious about the whole deal, and she has been pulling little bits of info out of Kelly all week, a snippet at a time, as in When did it start? and How did that happen? and So, the tattoo, hmmm? and Holy cow, he climbed in your _window_? Any other guy Kelly was dating, she'd want to know the details (she'd already asked whether Joe the nice cop was a good kisser), but Kelly doesn't offer many on Tommy and Tess doesn't ask.

The one thing Kelly's said about the sex, besides "Whoa," is that Tommy is definitely not a gentleman. And then she'd blushed deep pink, smiling.

Brendan's a gentleman in bed, but Tess has no complaints. None at all. Well, she doesn't have anybody else to compare him to, but she doesn't need a comparison to know that he suits her just fine.

She checks the clock again as she's cleaning up the kitchen and tells the girls it's time to turn off the TV, the Backyardigans is over and they need to make up their beds. 8:30 am, and Tommy must be up now, the water just went on in his shower. So she can go put on the little bit of makeup she usually wears, and brush her hair before she goes.

Twenty minutes later, she's downstairs again getting kisses from the girls and grabbing a water bottle from the fridge. Rosie goes right back to the table and hops back up into Tommy's lap as he eats scrambled eggs and orange slices, and he looks up and waves to Tess. "Have a good day," he tells her, situating Rosie more comfortably on his left leg as casually as Brendan would. "See you this afternoon."

"Don't let them wear you out," she warns him, and he grins.

"Nah, I'll sit on the deck and pretend I'm in Cancun. Get a little sun, maybe."

"Kelly's coming over this weekend," she tells him. The plan is that since this is the weekend that Jack and Martin spend with Mike, and since Brendan will be gone to that baseball game, it's Girl Time. Kelly and Tess are going to watch chick flicks, eat fancy chocolate, and do each other's nails.

"I know," he says, and sips coffee. "I gotta go talk to Frank this evening. Look over those endorsement contracts and see what he thinks is a good deal."

"Think he might want to come over for dinner?" Tess asks. "I know you're not supposed to be driving yet. And Kelly will have a fit if you go anywhere on the bike, even with a helmet."

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah. I'll text him and ask."

When she hears later that Frank's coming, she's glad she picked up an extra pork tenderloin at the grocery store. Tommy helps her prep food some, but really what he's great at is keeping the girls occupied so they don't bug her to death while she makes a Mediterranean version of Kelly's quinoa dish and prepares veggies for the grill. Then Frank's there with a bottle of basil vinegar for Tess and a briefcase full of paperwork for Tommy. Kelly comes in a few moments after that, with her little weekender suitcase. Tess has to smile: Kelly's taken the time to change out of scrubs and into something cute. She's wearing a lace-trimmed turquoise camisole and olive-green capri pants, as well as her silver sandals, and she's still wearing Tommy's pendant thing on the silver chain.

When she comes into the kitchen, Tommy goes right to her and pulls her into a hug. It looks like they're ready to go live with the news. Tess glances over to her daughters to gauge their reaction – which is nonexistent. Rosie is singing to herself at the table, and Emily is calmly watching her uncle kiss Kelly, lingering but discreet, and Tess realizes that Emily is perfectly okay with the idea of adults expressing physical affection. Thank goodness. Girls need to know that it's normal and healthy.

Dinner is fun. Tess misses her husband, but this is really good, feeding people she loves and chatting about nothing special. Frank's been extra busy this past week, getting Marco right back into his training schedule and catching up with all the paperwork and interview requests Tommy's win has prompted.

When they've finished the main part of the meal, she offers the Girl Scout mint-chocolate cookies she's had in the freezer since spring, as well as vanilla ice cream. The girls are enthusiastic, and even Frank eats a cookie, but Kelly says she'll wait for Vosges chocolate with "The Devil Wears Prada," and Tommy, barely suppressing a grin, asks if there's any peach ice cream left.

The minute he says it, Kelly's cheeks glow bright pink and she looks down at the table, and Tess suddenly figures out there's some kind of private history there. She doesn't want to know.

Except that she_ really, really does_.

She'll tackle Kelly on it later, because they're doing a very-girly sleepover thing. It had been planned back when they'd thought Tommy would be going to that baseball game with Brendan, but Kelly doesn't seem to want to change it. And given that long stretch of time that she and Tess hadn't talked much at all, back when Tommy was AWOL, Tess isn't inclined to give it up either. They need some girl time.

Besides, she has ways of making Kelly talk. She watches Kelly watch Tommy eat peach ice cream, and plots.

After the girls are in bed, and Frank and Tommy are settled at the kitchen table with stacks of contracts in front of them, Tess grabs the small bottle of bourbon out of the cabinet, two old-fashioned glasses, a bucket of ice, and the small stack of assorted miniature Vosges bars and puts them all on a tray. "You want popcorn too?" she asks Kelly, who shakes her head. She and Tommy can't seem to keep their eyes off each other, and Tess wonders whether Kelly won't wind up sleeping in the guest bedroom anyway, but she follows Tess downstairs to the cozy family room and they settle in with Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep and the fashion world, along with Vosges Naga (curry, coconut, nuts and milk chocolate), then Blood Orange Caramel. Toward the end, when they've giggled and sighed and swooned over the movie, and the chocolate, Tess hears the front door close, and then there are footsteps on the stairs down.

"You mind if I come watch the end with you?" Tommy asks, and Tess moves to the other side of the sectional sofa, leaving plenty of room for him to sit next to Kelly. It is nearly over, and the main character is just on the point of rejecting the superficial, morally questionable fashion world for that of news reporting (not that Tess is silly enough to believe that it's any less morally questionable than fashion), tossing her work cell phone into a fountain in Paris. Tess breaks open the last Vosges bar. They've consumed about half of each half-ounce bar, eating tiny nibbles and really savoring them, but this one is the _p__ièce de résistance:_ Mo's Dark Chocolate Bacon Bar.

"What _is _this?" Tommy says, when she passes him a piece of it.

"Just try it," Tess says, waiting, and is rewarded by the look on his face.

"Holy shit," he says, in awe. "That is _awesome_. Bacon and chocolate, who knew? Can I have another piece?" She hands it over, winking at Kelly, who's grinning widely.

Between the three of them, they devour the entire thing, while True Love and Self-Respect win the day in the movie, and the sight of Kelly watching Tommy lick chocolate off his finger with his eyes closed makes Tess remember that she has very important questions for Kelly.

But Kelly, relaxed by movie and chocolate and bourbon, wants to talk. "Hey, what came out of that meeting with Frank?" she wants to know.

"Oh, we found a bunch of things that might be good. Worth some further discussion, anyway," Tommy tells her. "Definitely _Men's Health_ magazine as well as _Muscle & Fitness_. Frank says that's an easy project – photo shoot, questions about my workouts. Not personal. Then TapouT and RevGear, and then there's something from EastBay about Nike cross-training shoes. Good stuff."

"Well, that sounds like a plan," she says. "You been back to the doctor yet?"

"Monday morning."

"Well, good," she says. "You need to be released for activities by your doctor before you... go running or anything." Her cheeks are faintly pink in the low light from the stairwell, and Tess remembers that one of the things people recovering from concussions are not supposed to do is have sex.

Ha. She feels for them, she does. But it's kind of funny, too.

"Think I'd better go to bed," Tommy says, almost apologetically. "Seems like I still need a lot of sleep."

"Oh, that's okay. You just rest," Kelly says. Tommy, seemingly oblivious to Tess' presence in the room, puts a hand under Kelly's chin and tilts it up for a kiss. Like the greeting one in the kitchen earlier, it seems very chaste. Soft and innocent, without the heat Tess saw the first time she realized they were really together. They smile at each other, and Kelly runs her hands through his hair, and then Tommy gets up off the couch.

"'Night, Tess," he says and smiles at her too, and then he's gone upstairs and they hear his bedroom door shut.

"So," Tess says, with intent, leaning to pour a little more bourbon into Kelly's glass. "Talk to me here. You're really gonna make him wait until the doctor says okay?"

"Well, I'm not going to mess around with doctor's orders," Kelly says reasonably, and sips bourbon. "Even if it kills me. Which, you know, it might." Tess waggles her eyebrows at Kelly, and Kelly rolls her eyes. "My God, if you ever want to make sure I get laid, just give that man some chocolate and let me watch him eat it. Or bacon. Or, as you did so efficiently just now, _both._"

"Uh-huh," Tess says smugly and sips from her own glass.

"Is Brendan still being a putz about the idea?" Kelly asks.

Tess nods. "Yeah. It's like he's still worried that Tommy's not grown up enough to manage you. Like you need special handling or something."

"Well, I do. And if he takes off on me again, I'm gonna lay for him with a cast-iron skillet," Kelly agrees. "But I don't think he will. I think he's got it out of his system. And with both of us dealing with our emotional stuff, things are really good."

"I figured." Tess fights a smirk away. "So what is the plan, do you have one? Is he going to move in with you?"

Kelly shakes her head. "No... I don't know, really. I don't want irregular stuff going on in my own bedroom while I'm trying to bring up children. I mean, I just think I need to model good behavior for them – at least when they're looking. And I am not okay with living together, not with kids in the house."

"I would agree," Tess says. "So... what _are_ you gonna do?"

"I don't know," Kelly says, shrugging helplessly and making a face. "I mean, I guess we can go on like this, with us just spending time together when Jack and Martin are at Mike's. At least for awhile. It sucks, but I just don't see any way around it, other than him coming over when they're asleep and leaving before they get up. But you know kids. One of them will wake up vomiting in the middle of the night, or have a bad dream and want to come in bed with me... Not looking forward to having to explain why Tommy's there."

"So are you thinking about getting married?" Tess asks, gently.

Kelly looks her in the eye. "It's what I would want. Yes."

Tess nods, and then finishes her bourbon. "Hey, drink that and we can go up to get ready for bed. Sleepover time." Kelly polishes off the little bit left in her glass too, and they go to the kitchen and put their glasses in the dishwasher.

Up in Tess' room, they brush their teeth and clean their faces, and put on sleep clothes. Tess likes her camisole and a pair of soft sleep shorts, but Kelly's brought a short cotton nightgown. Once in bed, Tess leaves the bedside lamp on and turns over on her pillow. "So. 'Not a gentleman,' huh?"

"Not talkin' about it, Tess," Kelly says, and laughs.

"Oh yes you are. I think you should explain that phrase."

"Nope."

"Tell me what the deal is with peach ice cream. Because I _know_ there's a deal."

Kelly cracks up. "Nope."

"It's naughty, isn't it?"

"Yep. And I'm not saying another word."

"What's the most ungentlemanly thing he's done to you?" Tess prods. Ask enough questions of a slightly-inebriated Kelly, and eventually she'll start laughing. And then she'll talk.

"Oh my God," Kelly says, and starts to giggle. "No, not telling you." She lifts her head off the pillow. "Unless you tell first. C'mon, dish me the dirt on your husband."

"On Brendan being naughty?" Kelly nods, emphatically. "Well, all right, I'll tell you one... we went to the shore on a short vacation once, just a couple of days, before I got pregnant with Emily. It was September, and the nights were chilly, but we went for a walk on the beach after dinner anyway, and every chance we got, we'd stop walking and kiss, and after a while I was really getting antsy to go back to the little motel where we were staying. But then it got dark, and we wound up under one of the boardwalks kissing, you know, with all the lights and stuff going on above, but it was dim under there, and I wound up sitting on his lap in the sand while we were kissing, and eventually I got desperate and pulled my skirt up – thank goodness it was one of those long broomstick ones – and we did it. Right there."

"Sounds nice," Kelly says. "And not very naughty." She laughs.

"Well, that's Brendan for you," Tess says. "Romantic. Not very naughty." And then she blushes, remembering the hotel room in Atlantic City and the Cosmo article recommending the reverse cowgirl and how much naughty-fun _that _was.

"_Whaaaaat?_" Kelly demands. "What are you thinking about now? You have to tell _me_ if you want me to tell you." So Tess gives her a brief description of the article, and the whole Brendan-in-a-suit thing, and Kelly cracks up. "I _knew _you were in there messing around! I turned my TV on so you could have some privacy."

"I knew you knew." Tess pokes her in the side until she squeals. "SO. Spill it: one very ungentlemanly Tommy thing."

"Oh," Kelly says. "Well, probably after a fight. You know, while I was still really mad at him? And Brendan made me go to that one?" Tess nods, she remembers. Also, she knows what happens after fights. "So he comes over and kisses me all over my face, and then when I go back to the dressing room, completely clueless as to what to expect, I'm there maybe two minutes before I'm backed up against the wall, and my panties are ripped to shreds on the floor, and he's going down on me, and – "

"Whoa," Tess interrupts. "_Whoa_ whoa whoa. Going down on you, seriously? Because post-fight is usually this huuuuuge testosterone overdose thing, like your average wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. Not a 'let me make this good for you, babe' thing. I've talked to enough fighters' girlfriends to know that much."

"Well, it was his idea. _Not _that I am complaining."

"How is that ungentlemanly again?" Tess wants to know.

"He _ripped my panties off_, Tess! I mean, literally shredded them." But now Kelly's got the giggles too, and she is laughing so hard she can barely continue. "So then there I was, with my back up against the wall, totally _skewered_..."

"Well, that sounds more like a post-fight thing," Tess says through her own laughter.

"... and I came, like, _twice_ in about five minutes..."

"Okay, that's enough," Tess says, grateful she hasn't told Kelly how exciting the discovery of Reverse Cowgirl has been for her marriage.

"... which is honestly par for the course with him anyway..."

"Oh my God, _stop_. I don't need to know any more!" They dissolve into giggles. And when that finally calms down, Tess says, "This is serious, isn't it? Not just sex. I mean, I see the way he looks at you, and I can't believe I missed it for all those months."

"You were in denial, maybe," Kelly offers. "But yeah. Serious." She sighs. "Sweet all the way to the bone. As Mama always said about Daddy, 'Ain't _nothin' _sweeter than a sweet man.' And she was right."

"I wish you the best, you know that," Tess says, and yawns. "Both of you."

The next morning, once everyone has had breakfast, Tess and Kelly head off for the gym while Tommy plays a game with the girls. They have a picnic lunch in Wilson Park, and then all the girls go shopping after dropping Tommy off back at the house, to research pickup trucks on the Internet.

Tess, prompted by a private question from Tommy earlier in the day, drives by Kelly's house on the way home. "Why are we here?" Kelly wants to know.

"So you can go get that little black dress out of your closet. And your black shoes. _And_ your black undies," Tess says meaningfully. "You have a _date._"

"I do?"

"You absolutely have a date. Downtown, at Butcher and Singer – great steaks, by the way. And do not fail to order the stuffed hash browns. _To die for_."

"With Uncle Tommy?" Emily pipes up in the back seat. "Good. You should get married."

Kelly's eyes get big and she bites her lip. "Wow. Reminds me, I need to have a conversation with the boys when they get home tomorrow," she says under her breath to Tess. But she's back in the minivan in under ten minutes, pink-cheeked with excitement and carrying a small bag as well as that pretty black dress.

Tess lets her take her time getting dressed, while she reheats leftovers for herself and the girls and talks to Brendan on the phone. He and Paddy are sitting about six rows back behind the home dugout at PNC Park, having a blast, and missing Tommy. Brendan asks to speak to him, but Tess has to explain that Tommy's in the shower, so Brendan talks to each of the girls, and then each of them has to talk to Grandpop, and about then, the game starts, so he says he has to go.

Tommy comes out of his room looking nice – wearing charcoal gray trousers and one of the button-down shirts she bought him, this one a muted gray-blue that makes his eyes stand out. "You need a jacket," she tells him, and goes up to her room to find one of the ones Brendan used to wear when he was bulked up for UFC. They're slightly too big for him now, but of course he's still hanging on to them. She pulls out a dark navy blazer, and checks to see how long it will be before Kelly's ready. Kelly, fully dressed, sticks her head out of the bathroom, where she's messing with her makeup, and asks whether she needs eye shadow, or just mascara. "You're beautiful, honey, don't worry about it," Tess tells her. "I think he just wanted to be romantic. It's not some huge deal. I don't think he even made reservations until this morning."

Kelly's face relaxes a little, and Tess realizes she's been actually stressing about this. "Good," Kelly says. "I don't know that I'm ready for... you know... big changes."

"Ah. No, I don't think that's in the works." Tess sniffs deeply. "You smell _gorgeous_. What is that? It's very old-fashioned, but sort of sexy too. Like pearls and a twin set over some really naughty underwear. Very Mad Men."

"It's Deneuve." Kelly smiles. "Beautiful green floral. Only in production a few years in the late '80s, and very hard to find now, but one of my patients at the office just moved to an assisted-living place, and she knew I liked perfume so she gave me some of her really vintage bottles. 1950's Chanel No. 5 parfum, the Deneuve, a gorgeous bottle of Coty Chypre..."

"You're going to have a great time," Tess assures her. "Are _you _wearing really naughty underwear?" She hopes so.

"No," Kelly insists. "Because a certain somebody has not been cleared by his doctor for extracurriculars, _that's_ why not. Now go away and let me finish getting ready." She smiles again and makes a shooing gesture at Tess.

Tess takes the blazer downstairs to Tommy, who's pacing around the kitchen and talking distractedly to Rosie and Emily. "Don't wear a hole in the floor," she says. "She's almost done."

He just nods. And then Kelly's there, in that cap-sleeved black dress with the deep v-necklines front and back, pearl studs in her ears and Courage ring on her right hand. Red lipstick. Black strappy shoes. Tess sees Tommy's nostrils flare as he picks up her perfume, and his eyes go a little glazed for just a second or two. _Ha. Don't think you can keep him off you for long, doctor or no doctor_, Tess thinks toward Kelly.

"You look _pretty,_" Rosie says, awed, and Emily nods.

"Beautiful," Tommy says softly, taking the jacket from Tess and shrugging it on. "You ready? You don't mind driving?"

"Not at all," she says.

They can't take their eyes off each other. It's sweet. Tess says, "Have a great dinner!" brightly, and practically pushes them out the door. "See you later!"

It's nearly 9:30 when they get back, laughing and relaxed and so happy, and Tess puts her book down. There's all kinds of chatter about what they ate (filet mignon, creamed spinach, onion soup, the stuffed hash browns, and they split a piece of chocolate-caramel cake for dessert), and how their waiter asked for Tommy's autograph and then six other people did too, and then they took a walk around downtown before coming back.

"Think I'll go to bed soon," she offers, thinking that poor Tommy's had enough celibacy for one week.

"I thought we were watching 'The Princess Bride'," Kelly says, blankly.

"Can I watch too, or is this still girl time?" Tommy asks, taking off the blazer and slinging it across the back of a kitchen chair.

"No, you can watch with us," Tess says. "Popcorn?"

"Ugh, no. I'd die, I ate way too much," Kelly says.

"It was really good," Tommy says. "Best steak I've ever had. Ever."

"Do you want to change first?" Tess asks, pouring water for herself.

"No, I'm comfortable," Kelly says, and Tommy agrees. "I'll probably take my shoes off, though."

So they sprawl on the couch downstairs, barefoot, and Tess sets the lights low and starts the movie. "You ever seen this one, Tommy?" He says no, but before long he's caught up in it. Westley, the Farm Boy, tells Buttercup "As you wish," and he means, "I love you," and Tess, staring straight ahead, still catches the way Tommy puts his arm around Kelly and pulls her close. He digs the sword duel at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity, he digs Fezzik the giant's wrestling, he digs Vizzini's advice to "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." The Man in Black tells Buttercup, "Where I come from, Princess, there are penalties when a woman lies," and raises his hand to strike her, and Tommy flinches. He twitches through the Fire Swamp, cringes through Inigo Montoya's drunk scene, and inhales sharply at the Sound of Ultimate Suffering. He cracks up all through the Miracle Man scene, cheers for Fezzik in the Holocaust Cloak, and mutters "Rat bastard," at the Six-Fingered Man before Inigo gets him.

At some point during the movie, Kelly – who's seen it, she says, about a zillion times – drifts off to sleep, curled up under Tommy's arm with hers across his stomach, and Tess, still without looking directly at them, sees him smile down at her head and drop a kiss onto her hair. Sees him pick up her left hand and kiss her tattoo gently, then place her hand back where it was.

_Brendan is wrong_. This time, anyway.

And then Buttercup jumps out the window to land in Fezzik's arms, her satin dress billowing in the night air, and Tommy sighs. The grandfather who's been reading the story to his sick grandson says, "As you wish," and Tommy blinks three or four times. He's been like a little kid, watching this movie, so open, and Tess feels tears prick her eyes because he's always deserved to be this safe.

Tess gets up and hands the remote to Tommy, putting her finger on her lips. "Her bag's in the kitchen. In case she wants to sleep with you," she whispers. "I'm going to bed."

Tommy's eyes flash up at her, full of happiness, and he smiles.

* * *

Sunday morning early, the light creeping around the edges of the curtains wakes Tommy up. He's got an warm, soft armful of great-smelling sleeping woman, and although his first thought is to kiss her awake, he's also got a raging need to piss, and there are times when you just have to take care of priorities. He disentangles himself very gently and heads for the bathroom, and on the way there he realizes he actually feels pretty good. No dizziness, no weird 2-D perspective or distortion to his vision, no fuzzy thinking, and that's fuckin'-A awesome.

When he gets back into bed, Kelly's moved a little, her breasts shifting under his shirt – _God_, she's got great tits – and he's hard almost instantly. It's the first time that's happened since last Sunday night, the first time his body has relented a little and said, _Okay, you're not gonna die, go ahead and get happy. _

Last night, after that stupid movie that made him feel like a kid, all hunkered down on the floor staring at the screen with his mouth open, he'd woken her up with kisses. Just sweet ones on her cheeks and forehead, and they'd come upstairs to his room. She had pulled her suitcase in, dug out her toothbrush and used it in his bathroom, and then looked up at him shyly and asked if she could sleep in one of his tee-shirts. "What am I gonna say to you, _no? _As you wish, baby." And he'd tossed her one of his plain navy shirts and watched while she took off her dress, just thinking how beautiful she is and how lucky he is and how sometime soon, he'll get to make love to her again.

Climbing into bed with her, he'd pulled her into his arms all warm and close and kissed her: every part of her face from temple to chin. Cheekbones, forehead, each eyelid, and her pretty baby-doll mouth. Kissed her hands, and each finger, each palm. He'd let her kiss him back the same way, and wiped the tears from her cheeks when she'd said,_ I'm so happy_. He hadn't said it back, but he'd felt it.

That had been all. Last night, it had been enough.

This morning, it is not even within a _hundred miles_ of enough.

So he does lean over and kiss Kelly awake, moving from the soft skin of her temple down her cheek and jawline and over to her pretty Cupid's bow mouth, and after a minute or so she's stirring in his arms, turning toward him and making a soft humming noise before her eyes drift open.

"Hi," she whispers. "You sleep okay?"

"Slept great. I think I should be sleeping with you all the time." She puts her hands in his hair and smiles, and he kisses her again. "I feel really good today. My head's clear and nothing hurts." He pulls her close and can't help rubbing himself against her hip, just a little.

She draws a little breath in through her nostrils, and it occurs to him that it's been a week for her, too. His brain flashes on how she looks on her back, naked, and there's really no reason for them not to do it, if she can keep quiet. It's so early and no one's up, and the door is closed, so he presses a little closer, moving his hips more directly, and she makes another one of those soft hmmm noises. He drifts his hand across her thigh, heading for her panties, but she grabs it. "Hey. You're not supposed to, not until your doctor clears you for that. Not supposed to get your blood pressure up. Or your heart rate."

"He said not while I was having symptoms, and I feel great. I could feel even better, if you'd just let me take your panties off." He raises his eyebrows at her and, her hand still on his, rubs down the center of her crotch.

"No," she says, but she's warm there, and he suspects that if he slid a finger underneath the panties she'd already be starting to get wet. He starts to reach for the sweet center of her, but she pushes his hand away. "Not a good idea, baby, not the way we get all out of control – it wouldn't be – "

"I want you. So bad, you have no idea." He reaches for her panties again, sliding his fingers underneath them to find her, warm and juicy, and she makes a noise of frustrated want.

She moves suddenly out of his grasp, turning over to lie on his chest and pushing him flat onto his back. "If you're this determined, maybe I should just..." she trails off and takes him in her hand, through his boxers. "Oh, my. That's – wow, you're really..."

"Please, baby, it wouldn't take very long."

"Well, then," she says, and pushes the covers off. "How about this, instead?" And she nudges his boxers out of the way, leans down, and takes him into her mouth. Just the head of his cock at first, her tongue soft and wet and hot, and then all of him, her hand stroking as her head moves, and it is really not going to take long at all, not long...

His head falls back against the pillow in unbelievable pleasure, the feeling of heat and pressure and just enough friction, and he tries to say how good that is, but she's making her quiet little sexy noises, the vibration of her throat humming through him,_ Jesus_, and she is amazing at this, _oh fuck yeah_. He slides one hand into her hair, helping her find the perfect rhythm, not too fast, raising his head and watching her lips on his cock. So good. So goddamn good... Then she moans with her mouth full again, flirting her eyes up to his and he's right there at the edge, _oh shit Mother of God..._ "I'm gonna come," he manages to whisper, trying to be considerate, but she doesn't move away or let go of him. Everything clenches up for a second or two before he bursts, right into her mouth, as stars streak across his vision, and she is really amazing at this because her hands keep stroking, but gently, and the pull of her mouth goes easy. When he can breathe again, she's cleaning him up, tongue very soft on him, and she's got a smug little look-what-I-did smirk on her face. "Hey," he whispers, letting go his death grip on the bedsheet to pull her face up to his and kiss her.

She kisses back, sweetly and then deeper, and he can taste himself on her tongue, salty like seawater. "Mmm," she says. "I loved that. Making you crazy."

"You pretty much make me crazy by breathing." Which is true. He heaves a huge contented sigh, kisses her one more time, pulls up his boxers and collapses back onto the pillows, holding her close.

There will be time later for everything. Brendan will be home in the afternoon, and he'll talk to him about Kelly. There's no putting it off anymore, and he doesn't give a fuck what Brendan thinks now, he knows this is right. He doesn't want to wake up without her anymore. And then Kelly's boys will be home by suppertime, and he's missed Jack's smile and Martin's exuberance, and so he'll eat dinner there and stay the night, make love to Kelly at least twice and wake up with her in the morning, all of them together.

**A/N: Deneuve is stunningly beautiful. If you ever come across a bottle selling for under $100 at an estate sale, FOR GOD'S SAKE LET ME KNOW. I'll snap it up.**

**I'd love reviews. Thanks, dear ones.**


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